GALLERIES

Critics’ Choices Bas Jan Ader: Water’s Edge

Loss and disappearance bookend Ader’s life (1942-75) and permeate his art, the half-dozen years’ worth of films, books and photographs that constitute at once his early, mature and late work. This show neatly gathers a selection of pieces in which water factors as an agent or expression of loss or disappearance. Beneath the conceptualist’s veneer of dispassion roils deep emotionality and sorrow as well as humor. Meliksetian Briggs, 313 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A. Ends July 27. Closed Sun.-Mon. (310) 625-7049. meliksetian briggs.com

Masaomi Yasunaga

Yasunaga’s first solo show in the U.S. is in turns raw and elegant but never less than thrilling. Material transformation is fundamental to ceramics, but what the Japanese artist does with clay, glaze, ash and glass is radically inventive as well as profuse in metaphorical resonance. The work feels at once primal and urgent. Nonaka-Hill, 720 N. Highland Ave., L.A. Ends Sat. Closed Sun.-Mon. (323) 450-9409. nonakahill.com

Also recommended Jacqueline Woods: Untold Stories

The Ventura-based photographer uses found photographs as raw material for her shadow-box assemblages. The pieces read, visually, like poems. They’re concentrated, built from fragments, and activated by rhythm and rhyme. They tap, nostalgically, into the memory of photographs as physical objects, passed from hand to hand. Duncan Miller Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica. Ends Sat. Closed Sun.Tue. (310) 838-2440. duncanmiller gallery.com