Unfinished Business

As of Monday, “Burgeoning Geometries” at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria was an exhibition far from completion. Artists Diane Cooper, Jason Rogenes, and Phoebe Washburn were in the gallery space still adding to their installations. Ms. Cooper, aided by a few assistants, was cutting paper, felt, and foamcore to create new elements for her vinelike wall growth “Emerger” (2005–06). Mr. Rogenes was lifting his 38-foot-tall totem pole of found Styrofoam and flourescent light, “Locus” (2006), to suspend it from the gallery’s 42-foot ceiling. Ms. Washburn was drilling the last few scraps of wood into her massive enclosed water ecosystem, “Minor In-House Brain Storm” (2006). Even further from completion was Tara Donovan’s “Untitled (Pins)” (2004), so far just a stack of unopened cardboard boxes, each holding thousands of no.17 straight pins.By today’s opening, the drills and scissors will be put away and Ms. Donovan’s work will be a shiny, prickly 40-inch cube, but the sense that these are works in progress remains. Process, the way a work is constructed, both the material components and the method of fabrication, is central to the art in the exhibition. Binding elements like nails and glue are visible on surfaces, wood is rarely sanded down or painted smooth, electrical cords dangle awkwardly in the air. These works flaunt their rough edges and bear their skeletons as skin. And they are made of materials — cardboard, paper, plastic, polystyrene, wood — that are not only recyclable but are sometimes incorporated directly from an artist’s previous projects, with the marks and nicks to prove it, dissolving boundaries between individual pieces in favor of a more holistic notion of a creative career.The six artists in the show (the oth ers are Charles Goldman and Jane South) are not united by shared aes thetics — few of the works look any thing alike — but by a similar approach to the creative process. Each starts with basic materials or forms and slowly builds them into intricate networks, the “burgeoning geome tries” of the show’s title.Ms. Donovan’s sculpture, for in stance, transforms hundreds of thou sands of straight pins into a single metallic cube, albeit with countless sharp points rather than six sleek edges. Each pin, typically used for dressmaking, is like a thread in a delicate weave, and the elegant simplicity of the final shape betrays the baffling process of its creation, whereby myriad atoms find improbable equilibrium and merge into a perfect form.The basic units of Mr. Goldman’s art are not materials but abstract meas urements: distances, volumes, and lengths of time. His four “Scrapwood Sculptures” (2006) are knotted stumps that describe the volume of the container in which the scraps were gathered, while his “Distance Painting (1060′)” (2006) presents a single red line, constantly looping back on itself, equal to the length of the perimeter of a typical New York City block. Thus the single unit of the urban grid takes the metaphoric form of the chaotic whole, a frenzied tangle of crisscrossing paths.Perhaps because these works offer a peaceful meeting of the contempo rary, in the form of humdrum objects shapes, and detritus of modern life and the old-fashioned, as exemplified by studied craftsmanship and the eth ical beauty of the hand-made, many take the reconciliation of seeming op posites as their subjects. Ms. Cooper’s sprawling installation describes a merger of the rectilinear neural net works of the computer chip and the lumpy biomorphic forms of the hu man brain. Ms. South’s “Untitled (Tracing Parameters)” (2006), an exquisite relief sculpture, juxtaposes the heavy industrial products it describes — sharp-toothed saws, plastic crates, grilled fans, a clunky cash register — with the precise rendering and delicate folded paper with which these objects are made. Mr. Rogenes’s glowing airborne tower, its white shell comprising Styrofoam used to ship wine bottles, TVs, and stereos, marries the aesthetics of the astronaut and Dumpster diver.Ms. Washburn’s installation presents a contrast between interior and exterior, animate and inanimate. From the outside, it looks like a slapdash wooden structure with timber beams supporting a giant concave wooden bowl that is pockmarked with orange stickers, each indicating the jutting point of a structural nail. But three Plexiglas windows allow viewers to peer inside, where they’ll discover a patchwork of scrap wood that the artist has accumulated over the years and in some cases used in previous projects. At the base are two large fiberglass pools filled with water, floating lily pads, potted leafy plants, and live snails — a functioning ecosystem supported by heating lamps.Ms. Washburn’s introduction of organic material makes explicit the true wonder of these works. Cumulatively, the art at Altria represents an exciting tendency in contemporary practice. Each piece reclaims artistic ingenuity from the realms of theory, concept, and industrial production and binds it anew to traditional creative virtues such as attention to material and formidable workmanship. Like Duchamp’s readymades, Rauschenberg’s combines, and anything Pop, these works celebrate the banal objects that fill our daily lives, but as in older models of art, here the mundane becomes extraordinary. The key to this alchemy is the process of accumulation and growth. No single pin, Styrofoam fragment, or scrap of wood is notable on its own, yet through participation in a complex whole each is elevated into something necessary, marvelous, and, in some cases, beautiful.Until March 11 (120 Park Ave. at 42nd Street, 917-663-2453).

Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business

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