Santa Monica

A three-person show called “Working in Metal” subverts commonly held notions about the weight, bulk and construction methods of sculpture. Robert Lobe’s 16-foot wide anodized aluminum piece, called “Terminus,” was shaped by hammering metal over boulders and trees in a New Jersey forest. Hanging on a gallery wall, it seems to float nearly weightless. The laborious process of emulating nature allows for considerable artistic license and a degree of abstraction that transforms landscape to a sensuous, organic form.

Alan Saret, on the other hand, makes snarled wire sculpture that might have been pulled from a scrap heap but actually comes to life through a complicated system of counting and knotting wire components. “Anacublon” is easiest to appreciate. Suspended from the ceiling, it descends into variations on a cube--elongated, properly fleshed out or disheveled. A pair of orange and yellow pieces in the back gallery look rather like witches’ wigs, grabbed from a fire, but you can bet that they were carefully plotted as modular, conceptually sound constructions.

John Duff’s work most closely resembles traditional sculpture, but he often challenges size-to-weight ratios in cast bronze or fiberglass forms that vacillate from thick to thin or open into hollows. “Faceted Wedge” is an arc composed of triangles, while “Floor Ring” might be a ruffled collar for a giant. Not that there’s anything even vaguely whimsical about Duff’s sculpture. Like the other two artists here, he is intensely engaged in the process of reconsidering and updating a hallowed art form. (BlumHelman Gallery, 916 Colorado Ave., to May 14.)