Wilshire Center

Step up, step up, ladies and gents. New York photographer and installation artist Mac Adams presents the “Pig-Headed Lady,” “Human Hydrant II,” “Man on a Bed of Nails,” “Female Sword Swallower” and “Female Juggler.” Notice the canny dual reality of these splendid attractions, models for large, walk-through outdoor works.

Five tall, tripod-like arrangements each support a juggler’s trick worthy of a Constructivist: flat and curved pieces of steel stilled in tricky tiers and balances. But that’s just for openers. These abstract sculptures also cast shadows, and with the right lighting those shadows become the personages first mentioned to you. Witty! Stylized! Look at the piquant angles of that juggler with her uptilted head, back-bent elbow and platter skirt. She could be the distant cousin of a Toulouse-Lautrec chanteuse. Check out that torrent of water curving fountain-like from the mouth of the Human Hydrant!

We won’t bore you with those big Type-C “Postmodern Tragedy” photos over there, with their strange images of people doing heaven-knows-what on the sides of a cocktail shaker, a lamp or a teapot. But we draw your attention to “When Does It End,” a photograph of a tiered silver serving dish with three views of fruit and flowers, progressively distorted or disembodied, against a pale background scene of kerchief-wearing women laborers. The cycle of consumerism, folks, is here for your silent inspection.

Gronk’s recent black-and-white paintings play with the seductive outlines of a woman in a low-backed gown and long gloves who is sometimes white-skinned and sometimes black. She raises her arms to create the shadow of a horned beast on the ground, reaches up to pull on a window blind, pushes her hands against her head. In “Out of Her Mind (Look at Her She’s Scared Out of Her Mind Series)” white paint sprays from the deep V-back of her dress.

A compactness of emotional reference and distilled gesture in these feisty works by the Los Angeles muralist combines with an irrepressible painterliness that patterns skin with busy strokes of the brush. But simple is better; in “Life’s a Tassle,” the activities going on in the night sky lessen the lady’s singular impact. (Saxon-Lee Gallery, 7525 Beverly Blvd., to June 11.)