The open road, with its aura of freedom, of the ongoing experience of life, has always been a powerful metaphor in literature and the visual arts. Richard Sigmund’s paintings self-reflexively synthesize (and simultaneously deconstruct) this tradition of road iconography and Action Painting’s gestural gestalt. At first glance, the works appear to be trompe l’oeil scale renditions of street fragments, or linear depictions of anonymous highways receding into the amorphous mists of time. Through tight framing, isolated symbolism, and geometric composition redolent of Kasimir Malevich or El Lissitzky,

Known as one of the Los Angeles artists who, in the ’50s, pushed clay beyond crafts and into the Abstract Expressionist arena, John Mason set clay aside in the mid ’70s and soon began stacking firebricks on museum floors (the “Hudson River Series,” 1978) and installing site-specific environmental sculptures. Now, for the first time in over ten years, Mason has returned to ceramic objects.

The new works are of three modular types: vessels, plates, and freestanding forms such as triangles, squares, and rectangles. Most are glazed in geometric patterns that both reinforce and contradict their shapes,