Neither a warning sign nor a flag of surrender, “Grey Flags,” a summer group show at SculptureCenter, is a joyous puzzle.

Organized by curator Anthony Huberman and artist Paul Pfeiffer, it brings together work by 19 artists. Beyond that, nothing is vouchsafed. The show raises any number of questions, among them: What is sculpture? What does the word “sculpture” mean, in an age of images?

“Grey Flags” begins in an up-tempo rhythm and ends in slow-burning brilliance. It asks that you skirt the edges of sculpture and, without the benefit of guiding wall text, forge your own connections within it.

The press release itself is a work in the show. Written by the conceptual artist Seth Price, it proceeds in a rhythmic, associational manner, not unlike the exhibition it precedes. You might enjoy it or you might be too impatient to enjoy it, but as a connoisseur of press releases, I can assure you it is among the most interesting you will ever encounter. But it won’t tell you anything specific about the show.

To find all the pieces, you’ll want the map printed on the back of the exhibition check list. For instance, you really need to look in order to find Kelley Walker’s untitled offset print of a brick wall, many copies of which are tacked to the brick wall by the entrance. Hung on the same wall is “Walter de Maria’s Lighting Field Painted in the Style of Jack Goldstein Circa 1986 (Version 2)” (2006), a painting by Jonathan Monk that depicts Mr. de Maria’s permanent sculptural installation in the midst of a lightning storm. The layers of representation are laid on so thick, they’re like a cake, to be savored with a smile – rather than laboriously taken apart like a peeled onion, with tears.

Leaning against the adjacent wall is another untitled Walker, a 5-foot steel disc covered in gold leaf with arrows cut into the center. The shape calls to mind a flower much like the yellow pansies in the painting by Wilhelm Sasnal nearby. And these floral forms lead to Helen Chadwick’s “Piss Flowers,” white stalagmitic sculptures made of lacquer-covered bronze.

Do the flowers have anything to do with Michael Krebber’s slide of a computer-generated pink sea anemone, projected here onto the back wall of a makeshift closet? Hard to say, though the title of Allen Ruppersberg’s “Honey I Rearranged the Collection” (which appears here in six versions) could be applied to the entire show. To various photographs (of, I presume, the artist) and silk screens, Mr. Ruppersberg has attached Post-Its with the words “Honey I rearranged the collection” followed by such amusing phrases as “instead of our relationship” or “to show that we are nice people.”

My favorite arrangement occurs in the basement, where the map is again useful.You begin by watching a short 16 mm film by Mr. Sasnal, “Nowa Huta,” which tells a story about a town and ends in a blast furnace alive with the solar reds and oranges of molten steel. Then you head past a spray-painted carpet by Piero Golia to a darkened room. There, in a niche beyond an archway, plays a twominute 16 mm film by Tacita Dean called “The Green Ray,” which records a sun setting over – or into – a body of water.

Next to Ms. Dean’s film is a singlechannel video by Walid Raad/The Atlas Group, “I Only Wish That I Could Weep (Operator #17).” It, too, concerns the setting sun. This series of sunsets was filmed by an anonymous Lebanese security agent known as Operator no. 17, who grew up in East Beirut and who “had always yearned to watch the sunset from … West Beirut.” How you come to be watching these suns set makes for an especially touching and beautiful tale; stare at this video just long enough and it will be burned powerfully into your retina.

To come away so marked seems as good a reason as any to see an art exhibition. But, as a show, “Grey Flags” is like a labyrinth: For every frustrating, dead-end alley there is an open passage leading somewhere unexpected.

Until July 30 (44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, 718-361-1750).