From afar, the new work by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz currently at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. looks quite disappointing. Mr. Muniz has photographed installations of re-created Old Master paintings of characters from ancient mythology, and the images seem to lack the clarity and grandeur of the original Titians and Rubens.

Step up close to the photographs, however, and a strange transformation occurs. As in impressionist paintings, a complete, recognizable image dissolves into a cacophony of component parts. Rather than dabs of paint meant to evoke flickers of light, these pieces are made from the discarded detritus of contemporary life. Junkyard staples like tires and hubcaps, metal canisters and tubing, crushed beer cans, and broken motors provide the bulk of the raw material, but there are also more distinctive objects interspersed — a Jeep, a piano, a computer monitor, a step ladder, and a satellite dish, to name a few.

As the eye scans from object to object, the viewer becomes conscious of the fantastic scale and compositional complexity of each installation. Assembled in a basketball court–sized studio outside Rio de Janeiro by art students from the local favela, who work according to the artist’s direction, each construction took six weeks to arrange and photograph.

Certain objects appear in image after image — most conspicuous is a blue trashcan — while others are particular to specific compositions. Throughout, the artist’s use of materials is often quite ingenious. Metal circles like hubcaps and gears recreate the Theban’s thick curls in “Oedipus, After Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (Pictures of Junk)” (2005–06), while the huntress’s flowing blond locks in “Atalanta and Hippomenes, After Guido Reni (Pictures of Junk)” (2005–06) are made of strands of amber rope.

The blood dripping from the mouth of Saturn in Goya’s famous image of the paranoid deity devouring his child is made of red netting and scarlet metal canisters. Crushed soda cans add color to Mars’s loincloth in Velazquez’s depiction of the god of war. Gold bottle caps and yellow plastic toys create the sparkling jewels of Medea’s bracelet in Delacroix’s rendering of the heartstricken princess clutching her children and wielding a knife — the very moment before her twisted act of vengeance against the man who abandoned her.

In Caravaggio’s depiction of Narcissus, which reads as an allegory of vanity and art-making, the magical surface of water that separates the lover of self from his reflection comprises the most banal materials: drab metal tubing, rusty coil springs, and empty cylindrical canisters. By describing this fantastic border between reality and illusion with ordinary objects, Mr. Muniz highlights how his work simultaneously elevates the prosaic and brings the Olympian down to earth.

Prior to the junk series, he made several similar series in which everyday materials — sugar, cotton balls, chocolate, wire, thread — were used to re-create classics of art history. At times, the work smacked of irreverence or farce. But this latest series aims for more than irony. Using mythological figures as his subjects, Mr. Muniz directly addresses art’s exalted status and shows that it is possible to create socially relevant and widely accessible work that is neither dumbed down nor bled of its mystery — a useful reminder for an art world that often mistakes inaccessibility for profundity.

Two other recent series by Mr. Muniz are also at Sikkema Jenkins. Brazilian “Iron Mines” (2005–06) become sites for large earth drawings, plotted by the artist on digital renderings and carried out by construction teams with tractors and GPS systems (the tiny trucks that appear in these images give some sense of each work’s awesome scale). Broadly speaking, the project evokes pre-Columbian earth sculpture and 1970s Earth art, but many of the specific images display the humdrum objects and comic-book flippancy associated with Pop art. Among the 20-odd photographs are a folded paper airplane, a pair of dice, a horseshoe magnet with electric zigzag bolts shooting from its two ends, and a keyhole.

In the artist’s third series, called “Pictures of Pigment” (2005–06), he once again painstakingly reconstructs famous paintings, this time using paint pigment. The compositions are made on small surfaces, which are blown up into large-scale photographs. Works by Klimt, Monet, Hopper, and Redon are given a thick luxurious texture, almost like a soft, fluffy rug.

High-minded, yet accessible and unpretentious, Mr. Muniz’s art succeeds in bridging the gap between deep meaning and tactile immediacy, between “difficult” high art and “easy” low art, between cerebral conceptualism and gestural expressionism. He gives theorists plenty to discuss — perceptual tricks with scale; the complex interplay of art’s exaltation and its mundane materials; how instantaneous photography can be as slow and deliberate as Old Master painting — but the true strength of the work lies in its visual clarity. It is in his art’s accessibility, the near transparency of its creation, that the viewer makes out its genuine splendor.

Until October 14 (530 W. 22nd St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-929-2262).