Francesco Vezzoli’s “Marlene Redux: A True Hollywood Story!” (2006) spoofs the sort of celebrity biography — the kind that typically appears on “E! True Hollywood Story” — many people try to avoid when channel surfing. In Mr. Vezzoli’s film, it is the artist who becomes the subject of this “exposé.” Over the course of 15 hilarious minutes — through “re-enactments” and interviews with gay porn stars, hustlers, actors, and others, including an actress playing Anni Albers (deceased wife of the artist Josef Albers) — the film recounts how Mr. Vezzoli went crazy trying to remake Maximilian Schell’s 1984 documentary “Marlene” with non-actors. In the spoof, the process drove the artist so insane that he was ultimately found dead in a swimming pool. In telling this story, the film manages to send up not just the celebrity bio, but also the Romantic notion of the artist as an inspired and doomed madman.

Still, I was pleased, and surprised, to find that Mr. Vezzoli’s was the sole example of campy, pop-culture parody on view in the autumn shows at P.S. 1. The film is part of “Senso Unico,” an exhibition of contemporary Italian artists that offers much offhand theatricality but scant visual star power.

Although funny, Paolo Canevari’s short film “Continents” (2005) adds up to little more than a one-liner. Five animals are leashed to five tires labeled with the names of continents: a mouse for Asia, a pig for Africa, a cat for Europe, a rabbit for Australia and, barking annoyingly at them all, a dog attached to the tire labeled America. True though it may be, the film doesn’t warrant repeat viewings. Vanessa Beecroft offers a more somber and affecting political work with the filmed performance “VB61 Still Death! Darfur Still Deaf?” (2007), in which the artist pours blood (or blood-red paint) over female models painted black and lying on a large white sheet. Hollow drama and unmotivated displays of feeling — as in Pietro Roccasalva’s pastels or Rä di Martino’s film “La Camera” — unfortunately dampen much of this show.

One could certainly level the same charges at Angelo Filomeno, who works with embroidery, but I’m inclined to see his extraordinary work as witticisms in an operatic vein. His two embroidered silver knights’ helmets, for instance, which hang from the ceiling, surmounted by spiky plumage and decorated with beads and mother of pearl, at once nod to the pageantry of war and smirk at the pomp of warriors.

High drama, of a weightier, though not always more convincing, variety, also animates the Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed’s solo exhibition. In the six-minute film “Birth of Love” (2006), my favorite among his pieces here, a cat happily munches on a bloody rat. Another film, “Trust Me” (2007), features a man irksomely keening and babbling for more than half an hour.

If Mr. Abdessemed’s films consistently hit their mark, the same cannot be said of his sculptural work on view. “Axe On” (2007) consists of bouquets of welded knives and machetes sprouting from the floor. Their rather spiritless proliferation left me wondering, what’s the point? Similarly, the 23 upended black marble drill bits, some as tall as a person, that constitute “Or Noir” (2006) failed to bore into me. Both of these sculptural works have a Pop glibness that seems to blunt whatever menace they might convey, while conveying nothing especially thought provoking.

It is, however, thoughtfulness that distinguishes the most successful of the shows currently at P.S. 1, the first American solo exhibition by a Belgian artist named Kris Martin. Although it too is uneven, its conundrums weave a net that ensnares the viewer. Mr. Martin assembles sly conceptual pieces that address such themes as time, scale, and destruction. The first gallery, for instance, offers a train arrivals/departures board emitting its familiar snapping sound as the cards flip — yet the board is, eerily, entirely blank. Nearby, on the floor, stands another work, accurately described by its title, “Plate with Milk” (2005). The trick here is that, in the absence of a cat lapping at it, we have no idea whether, or to what degree, it is “real.” Real saucer and fake milk? Or real milk? Tough to say without getting on one’s knees and tasting it.

Indeed, Mr. Martin excels when displaying such quietly intriguing pieces. “Vase” (2005) requires the artist to smash and glue back together a tall, blue and white Chinese porcelain vase each time he shows it. “100 years” (2004) apparently describes the amount of time it will take for a small sphere, seemingly made of bronze, to oxidize. A few of the titles here are perhaps too obscure, even when the pieces themselves are not. A tall, quarter-inch-wide mirror, entitled “Mr” (2007), reflects a slice of one’s life. And the impenetrable title “Mandi VIII” (2006) appends to a scale reproduction, in plaster, of the Laocoon, minus the serpents.

In a few cases, the titles provide the sole instances of humor in works that fall flat. A silver-plated bronze skull is called “Still alive” (2005), while a set of antique glass bell jars arranged on the floor earns the title “All Saints” (2007), perhaps because of the ghost-like shapes. Far more amusing is the inscrutably titled “Mandi XV” (2007), a more than 20-foot-long steel broadsword.

Still, though no outsized talent announced him- or herself in them, this season’s group of shows reminds us, by its internationalism, that art is not, as the Italian road sign would have it, a senso unico — or, one way street — but rather a senso unico, aunique-feeling, which requires no translation.

Until January 7 (22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, 718-784-2084).