Forms at play in the field of the mind’s eye

In Vincent Fecteau’s tabletop sculptures, God isn’t in the details. Everything is.

At first glance, the San Francisco-based artist’s 13 works at the Pasadena Museum of California Art resemble architectural models. The more closely you look at the exhibition, which was organized by the UC Berkeley Art Museum, the stronger the similarity seems.

The scale of Fecteau’s diorama-size objects matches that of the Lilliputian props architects use to convince clients of the viability of their visions. His materials -- balsa, foam core, cardboard and papier-mache -- are the same as those found in such 3-D designs. So is his palette: neutral beiges, grays, blacks and whites that highlight the structural subtleties of the compact constructions.

Fecteau glues together his tidy assemblages with the same casual care architects bring to their site-specific layouts: absolutely precise in terms of proportion and placement, yet never so resolved or polished that they seem to be complete unto themselves. Like their handcrafted models, his approachable pieces are all about potential, and explaining things as clearly as possible.

Most important, both types of tableaux are kernels of bigger and better ideas that are just itching to be realized in other places. And that’s where the similarities end.

The spaces in which these miniature worlds do their work are different. Architectural models almost always accompany proposals, which are meant to become buildings, which are part of the man-made environment, which is so monstrously scaled that it often dwarfs individuals. In contrast, Fecteau’s homemade enclosures are accompanied by nothing but a number, 1 through 13, and the year they were made, 2001 or 2002. Their effects take shape not in the visible world but in the imagination -- right inside your head, right where you’re standing.

The immediacy of art is available to anyone with an active imagination. And Fecteau shows himself to be a gracious host. Playful and instructive, his user-friendly sculptures not only take the imaginatively inclined on flights of fancy, they also provide the imaginatively challenged with clues as to how they can be best used. Whatever your level of expertise, maximum viewing pleasure is the point of these wonderfully useless constructions, which are profoundly social.

The one installed on a table nearest the entrance appears to be a cross between an igloo with skylights and a motorcycle helmet. Its arched front door faces the one you just walked through. To enter Fecteau’s dome-shaped structure, your mind has to do what your body just did, leave the everyday world for a temporary trip into the unknown.

To ease you on your way, Fecteau has glued two real seashells and half of a walnut beside his whimsical building’s entrance. The seashells suggest exotic adventures on dreamy beaches, reverberating in the Arctic atmosphere that Fecteau’s snowy white sculpture evokes.

The walnut’s half shell echoes the shape of the sculpture, duplicating its world-within-a-world format. It also functions symbolically, standing in for what is often said of contemporary artists: “They’re half nuts.” And if that suggests that you might have to be a little nutty to take art like Fecteau’s seriously, it’s infinitely more rewarding than being an uncomprehending half-wit.

Inside the model, a rope extends from the doorway’s threshold. Rising along the curved edge of one wall, it descends along the scalloped top of another, echoing the shape of the shells. “Hang on,” the rope hints, “we’re going for a ride that may not be logical but will make sense in the end.”

Fecteau’s 12 other works deliver on this promise. Each lures viewers into little worlds where stories start to spin -- never out of control but more freely than usual.

Painted black, one resembles a ski-resort condominium, a gabled mansion attic and a stage set for a modern drama. A gray one, built from real twigs and tiny I-beams, has the presence of a military bunker and the leftover spaces beneath freeway overpasses. In others, references to underground sewer systems, rooftop ducts, the bridges of supertankers and sci-fi spacecraft share space with pine cones, Popsicle sticks, toilet-paper tubes, torn newspapers and more nuts -- this time securely screwed to big bolts.

All of Fecteau’s sculptures flirt with symmetry but never embrace its mirror-image equilibrium. Exceptions rule his quirky works, which are nevertheless anchored by the idea of balance, which they evoke and bend.

Many include window-like openings that invite viewers to lean forward and look through. When you do, Fecteau’s works recall the bulky devices optometrists use to test their patients’ vision. From this perspective, it isn’t difficult to see his sculptures as elaborate masks or the headgear for fantastic ceremonies.

But wearing one, in your mind’s eye, isn’t nearly as satisfying as wrapping your head around its every detail. That’s when Fecteau’s fusion of art and design generates its idiosyncratic poetry.

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‘Vincent Fecteau: Recent Work’

Where: Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 E. Union St., Pasadena

When: Closed Mondays and Tuesdays

Ends: May 25

Price: $4 to $6, 11 and younger free

Info: (626) 568-3665