Santa Monica

Witty and perverse, Rachel Lachowicz transforms things into suggestive other things. She can turn a piece of T-shaped metal into a plunger for a nonexistent explosive charge. She can mount a graphite log on a wooden cart making a crude pencil caddy for giants on the run. Hers is a surreal vocabulary of odd anecdotes for things transformed by use. A library card catalogue becomes a process piece on traceability, leaking trails of fine sand when opened and closed.

A teeter-totter on wheels is a perfect analogy for Lachowicz’ strange sense of humor and its underlying thread of danger. The board is covered with a grid of loose marbles that begs to be tipped into destruction. Just the thought sends the gallery staff into shivers of anguish whenever anyone gets too close.

There is often wonderful poetry in these offbeat functional objects. Whether it is the faint line made by a chunk of graphite that scribes delicately on a wooden plank when a peg is pulled or the thick, black, crumbly streak made by a pile of burnt railroad ties pulled like a charcoal sled across white paper, there is a deep reverence for the material. (Krygier/Landau Contemporary Art, 2114 Broadway, to Oct. 7.)