The title of the sprawling group show at David Zwirner through August 10, “A point in space is a place for an argument,” is derived from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus,” and is about as open to interpretation as that often-cryptic thinker’s pronouncements. The very act of quoting Wittgenstein, in fact, identifies the unnamed curators of this show with a heady set of aspirations that characterized the artistic vanguard of the 1960s and ’70s.

While there is no obvious connector between the 31 artists on show, a pared-down element in their work feels linked, somehow, to semiotics, to probing the linguistic structure of art.

The pervasive feeling of the show is sparse rather than minimalist, with a preference for a rough-at-the-edges reductivism. The abstract paintings and sculptures explore geometry and simple forms, but with a handmade, rather than industrial, feel. In addition to abstract works, there are pieces that entail appropriation. But there, again, forms are worn and weary rather than pristine and manufactured. And there are a number of artists of, or on the border of, the outsider camp. Many of the works have a provisional, or nonchalant, feel, as though they are taking a stab at an argument rather than making a defiant statement.

The first gallery you might enter (the two outer of three large units accommodate the show) gives the impression that the show is literally concerned with marking points in space, with linear works by Al Taylor and Fred Sandback. Taylor’s “Low Rider (Bern)” (1992) has a precarious arrangement of different colored broomsticks protruding from a wall and held in place by wires, while Sandback’s untitled piece from 1999 extends his trademark string, in this case ochre acrylic yarn, from two points high up a wall to a center point on the floor a few feet into the room.

Bolstering the idea that line and shape are the essence of the show are various other works entailing lines, grids, or circles. A characteristic group of naive paintings by Forrest Bess include “Untitled #14” (1951), which places half a dozen short painterly white lines over a thin white circle carved into a black ground. Andre Cadere’s “Barre de bois rond” (1977), an irregular rod consisting of 52 wood segments painted white, yellow, orange, and red, is propped at an angle against a wall. Eva Hesse’s “Test Piece” (1970) is a circular coil made of latex and wire. Complementing the vaguely occult sense of the Bess paintings are works by Alfred Jensen, including “My Oneness, a Universe of Colors” (1957), a diagrammatic, expressively hand-painted arrangement of colorful concentric lines.

But equally prevalent are massed shapes and found objects. John Chamberlain, who is best known for sculpture compressing components of car wrecks, has an atypically austere piece, “Untitled (couch)” (1980), which consists of a shape of sandy-colored foam material bent back on itself and held in place by cord. In a similar vein, Michael Mahalchick’s untitled work of 2006 suspends a heap of fabrics from the ceiling within a loose net. Steven Parrino’s “Skeletal Implosion #3” is a circular wall piece in enamel and gesso on scrunched canvas.

Parrino is one of many artists in this show (Taylor, Sandback, and Hesse are others) who died before his time — he was killed in a motorcycle accident on New Year’s Eve in 2004 — adding a strange element of doomed youth to this otherwise cerebral and quite playful show. Among those who take the show in a very different direction visually is the late Jason Rhoades, an artist whose installations challenged the division between extremes of scatter and organization, and who is represented here by a manipulated found object, “Deer Dressed as a Horse, Dressed as a Sheep” (1983).

There is something quaint and anachronistic in thinking that art must involve impoverished materials worked through either radical minimalism or the found object in order to be about its own linguistics. Indeed, painterly images worked skillfully within a frame can do this job just as well. The presence here of paintings by Raoul de Keyser shows that imagery can be conscious of its own style and precedents as a means of testing its semiotic structure. Representational painters such as Luc Tuymans, who also shows with David Zwirner, or Merlin James and Peter Doig, who do not, could have augmented this exhibit while heartily contradicting that kind of exclusionary argument.

Three contemporary sculptors in the show add an element of the poignant, crafted image while conforming to the arte povera around them: Hans Accola, VincentFecteau, andIsaGenzken. Mr. Accola’s “Joy Dog” (2005–07) is put together from woodshop scraps in a playful throwback to the Constructivist aesthetic.

Mr. Fecteau’s untitled work from 2003 in papier-maché, burlap, and painted balsa wood is at once dainty and robust; it could be a toy, an architectural model, or a purely abstract exercise in form variation. Ms. Genzken’s three works in concrete on open-steel stands from 1988–89, titled in German ” Mountain ,” “Well,” and “Honeycomb,” eschew the found bric-a-brac for which this artist is best known in favor of the romantic austerity of ruins in a landscape: a poetic interpretation that leaves linguistics well alone.

Until August 10 (525 W. 19th St., between Tenth Avenue and West Street, 212-727-2070).