LA CIENEGA AREA

An exhibition by New Yorker Bryan Hunt serves mainly to remind us that the artist must be forever credited with one of the best sculptural concepts of recent years. Like most good ideas it was limpidly simple. He took a form about four feet long and shaped rather like an undernourished zeppelin and cantilevered it horizontally from the wall about eight feet up. The notion was as quietly radical as Brancusi’s “Bird in Flight” in its day or, later, Robert Irwin’s floating disc. It articulated an unused bit of sculptural vocabulary.

The resulting series was dubbed “Airships,” and six are on view tracing Hunt’s pursuit of the theme over the past 12 years. The actual form appears to be constructed like old model airplanes--or real ones for that matter--with a skin of material stretched over supporting skeletal struts. Some of the “airships” are pure blimp-forms, others have scooped or notched indentations. All are painted metallic silver, gold or copper.

Unlike Brancusi’s dynamic, upthrusting “Bird” or Irwin’s dematerialized discs, Hunt’s works are about buoyancy, pure floating. They have the magic of an illusionist’s assistant wafting on air. Their obvious anchoring to the wall does nothing to dispel the impression; it rather heightens it by suggesting that the airship is capable of ghostly passage through solids.

His works make both echoing poetry and a resonant triumph of intellectual clarity. To his credit, Hunt does not rest on these laurels. He could easily be a famous one-idea artist. (Daniel Weinberg Gallery, 619 N. Almont Drive, to June 7.)