In recent decades, sculpture has had to cede a great deal of its turf to newer three-dimensional forms. Nowadays environmental and installation art routinely manipulate entire physical sites while multimedia works increasingly break down the distinctions between in-the-round and two-dimensional art.

But sculpture’s possibilities remain as varied as ever, as demonstrated in “Flavor Intensive.” This intriguing mix of sculptures and drawings, sponsored by the Triangle Arts Association (a nonprofit group that organizes workshops and residencies in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn), brings together five mid-career artists who all pursue, more or less, sculpture’s traditional role as a self-contained, transportable art form. This doesn’t prevent the work from feeling thoroughly contemporary, though, nor does it obscure the artists’ remarkably different temperaments.

Matt Blackwell’s 7-foot-tall bear dominates one of the gallery’s three smallish spaces. Fashioned of old sections of tin ceiling, the bear thrusts skyward a gleaming blue index finger – the lone note of color on its battered surfaces. This pontificating gesture, half comical and half menacing, neatly incarnates the sculptor’s blustery attack. A second, far smaller sculpture of a blue jay is almost exquisite in its rough-edged pursuit of nature. A gathering intensity seems to underlie both sculptures’ improvisational materials and facture. A group of ink drawings by the artist have the same kooky spontaneity – a bear’s eyes bug 2 feet out of their sockets in “Vision Thing” – but without the sculptures’ coarse physicality, they have more of an air of tossed off doodles.

Arthur Mednick’s wall-mounted sculptures, on the other hand, suggest earnest diligence. His three small pieces consist of elemental, biomorphic shapes with heavily rounded edges. Their intriguing surfaces have the dull, silvery quality of gunmetal, but their deep, modeled relief is more typical of cast-bronze sculpture. (Gallery literature indicates that they’re constructed of welded layers of steel plate.) In “Unnamed #1,” two thick “legs” extend down from a compact mass, cryptically suggesting a human trunk, a Neolithic talisman, or perhaps both. The artist’s two grid-like drawings are less remarkable; they seem like gentler versions of Frank Stella’s early black paintings.

Hardly anything could contrast more with this studied reserve than Linda Ganjian’s infectious abundance. Her single sculpture, somewhat larger than a game board, resembles a highly symmetrical city grid built up of hundreds of tiny, bulbous parts: Picture the Forbidden City, minutely re-created on a tray of scarlet and sky-blue petits fours. The title of this visionary confection (“Ode to Disappearing Smokestacks”) is a little startling; some tubular forms evoke chimneys, but nowhere is there a hint of industrial grime or dust. A single abstract drawing on an adjacent wall shows the same curious combination of sensuousness and regimentation.

Arthur Simms offers a different kind of abundance in four pieces consisting of discarded objects tied together in unlikely combinations with wire and twine. “Carnival” features a birdcage and glass jars bound to a skateboard, with a wooden shoe-stretcher attached like a proboscis to one end. These playfully joined castoffs seem to exalt the messy bounty of urban life – waste, inequalities, and all. Ultimate meanings, though, are elusive: Just what is the import of four light bulbs and a pair of scissors projecting from a foil-covered ball? A rather different attitude informs this Jamaican-born artist’s drawings: Combining human hair, reproductions of Renaissance paintings, and sometimes stitched-on bits of metal, these dark, haunting compositions imbed elements of high culture within primitive, shield-like designs.

Of all the work here, Peter Lundberg’s two rough-hewn cement towers give the most muscular impression of process. At 9 feet tall, their twisting forms almost have to bow to fit the gallery space. Molds, apparently made from plastic sheeting, have imprinted some surfaces with sinewy, flowing folds, lending a visceral charge to their height. In other places, the unsmoothed cement erupts with a raw cragginess. A crumpled piece of sheet metal lies embedded in the side of one; the bases of both columns show marks of casting in 55-gallon drums. Several drawings with bold thrashes of ink explore the same gritty monumentality, though their gestures feel somewhat symbolic alongside the tonnage of cement.

Group exhibitions can sometimes seem like dutiful inventories, but “Flavor Intensive,” curated by John Clement, Karen Wilkin, and Andy Yoder, revels in its divergent personalities. Each artist here has found a different means of imparting fantastic or mythic qualities to mundane materials. A traditionalist may occasionally wish for subtler means – less reliance on striking materials, ornamentation, or scale – and more faith in the modulated rhythms that, for instance, give such eerie intensity to Giacometti’s early Surrealist sculptures; it’s a mark of the Postmodernist times that of the five, only Mr. Mednick seems interested in this avenue. But in this heated up art climate, with its countless, instant flirtations with eye and mind, these artists’ compelling explorations make the trip to Brooklyn well worth the effort.

Until October 29 (111 Front Street, no. 206, Brooklyn, 718-858-1260). Prices: $200-$9,500.