Santa Monica

Ironically, Donald Lipski’s large untitled assemblage begins to breed life from industrial materials. A mammoth braid of nylon rope tied like a pony tail strongly suggests a sperm; a long glass pipe filled with water and pink rubber bands looks like intestines clogged with worms; a hovering steel-wool blimp high on the gallery wall recalls a strangely mechanical deep sea sponge.

Lipski’s artistic forays as a mad scientist have the spark of life, but lead a curiously tense existence. His female-shaped bass cello case with red fluid in its belly is suspended by a bail picker like a prisoner of the Inquisition. His two white, steel pylons bolted to big chunks of wood put a vise grip on the verdant book titled “Meat Under the Microscope”; they have enough aerobic pressure to make the whitewashed wood look flush with fresh blood.

Biological allusions are frequently subtle: as much due to the weird visual logic created by the assemblage as to the hardware the artist uses. Pieces give the gallery the feel of an underwater junkyard where derelict devices have combined via spontaneous generation. Human Angst seems to have been genetically imprinted on these things when they were originally machined and Lipski unleashes it effortlessly with the assembly. Ultimately, that gives the work a biting cynicism. (Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, 1547 9th St., to Dec. 30.)