TWO YEARS AGO Riley McFerrin shared an exhibition at Bucheon Gallery with another artist and managed to crowd more than 100 pieces on his share of the wall space. This time, for "Riley McFerrin: Even Though," he has the gallery all to himself but has only installed just over a dozen pieces most of them quite large, including an imposing wood-and-rope suspension bridge that stretches from one side of the room to the other! You wouldn't want to walk on it – it looks pretty creaky and unreliable – but it perfectly embodies McFerrin's work: weathered, worn, natural materials that convey in one way or another a subtle feeling of tenuousness and fragility. Most of his works, even those hanging on the wall, have a prominent sculptural aspect and utilize a wide array of materials normally associated with three-dimensional constructions: wood, foam, rope, resin, and even beeswax. McFerrin joins these components at awkward, jagged edges, frequently slathering a viscous soup of clear acrylic on top to make everything looks ancient and naturally preserved, like an insect in amber. It remains uncertain, however, whether McFerrin is actually trying to preserve something more abstract under all of that heavy protective coating. On the few occasions when he inserts a human image into his work, it is often of a child drawn in a deliberately nostalgic, illustrative style – seemingly a reference to "simpler times" and a correspondingly ucomplicated way of looking at the world. The words that McFerrin has carved on the surfaces of his pictures possess a similar quality. Written in a large, awkward hand, "Clear/Clean," "Either/Or," and "Don't Cry Ruby" are cryptic and mysterious, yet also essentially simple, like messages that might emanate from a Ouija board.

Wed.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sun., noon-5 p.m., 540 Hayes, S.F. (415) 863-2891. (Lindsey Westbrook)