Nubuo Sekine. Phase of Nothingness—Water, 1969/2005; steel, lacquer, water; 47 ¼ x 47 ¼ in. (diameter) and 11 7/8 x 86 5/8 x 63 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Blum & Poe Gallery, New York.

In 1966, the exhibition Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors filled the Jewish Museum with large-scale Minimalist sculptures of steel and plastic and helped define a generation of artists and a new wave of critique. The original show is now visible as a miniature model in the current exhibition, Other Primary Structures. Divided into two parts, Others 1 examines work from 1960–1967, while Others 2 focuses on work between 1967–1970. Curator Jens Hoffman includes artists from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East who offer more nuanced approaches to the monolithic style of famous Minimalists like Donald Judd or Robert Morris.

In Others 2, non-industrial materials in a monochrome palette contrast with the bright, pop colors and perfect, smooth forms of the 1966 show. Artists Susumu Koshimizu and Benni Efrat break down the solid platonic cube into familiar textures and unstable structures in their respective works, both created in 1969: Paper and Matter on the Move. Koshimizu’s thin paper cube containing a centrally placed granite rock is echoed in silhouette by Efrat’s work, with its sloping sides of foam inset with a slab of steel. A simple gesture by South Korean Lee Ufan, Relatum (1969) consists of two blank, unstretched canvases placed on the ground next to a third canvas hung on the wall. The space is boldly yet subtly activated by their scale and their position: One can feel the room’s axes, the blank quietude, and the residue of movement. In Jiro Takamatsu’s Slack of Net (1968–1969), loose cotton ropes knotted into a grid form a fishing net, countering the perfect grid structure of modernist painting that continues in Minimalist aesthetics. Slight ripples in the water are created on the surface of two large, black lacquered steel rectangular and cylindrical forms with each approaching movement in Phase of Nothingness—Water (1969), a striking work by Nobuo Sekine.

One soon begins to realize that natural materials like those found in Other Primary Structures are absent from the original exhibition. The economy of materials here seems to offer a view that no surface—however common—is unworthy of attention. Instead of high-gloss chrome and Plexiglas, the use of simple fabric, paper, or rough-hewn rocks in a Minimalist piece asserts that the textures of daily life need not be absent from art. Other Primary Structures presents an other minimalism that does not refuse the beauty of imperfect everyday materials and forms.

Other Primary Structures is on view at the Jewish Museum in New York City through August 3, 2014.

Vanessa Thill is an artist, curator, and writer based in New York. 

Installation view, Jumana Manna: Menace of Origins, SculptureCenter, 2014. Photo: Jason Mandella.

At SculptureCenter, a single strange object made from egg cartons encased in waxy white plaster greets the visitor at shoe level. Farther ahead are stone blocks and a hollow plexiglass form filled with seatbelts. These scattered pieces lead toward the main room of Jumana Manna’s Menace of Origins, where a group of new sculptures surrounds a monitor playing the video Blessed Blessed Oblivion (2010). Influenced by Kenneth Anger’s experimental short film Scorpio Rising (1963), which explores masculinity and neofascism through footage of biker bravado, Manna’s video also shows men demonstrating manliness in unnerving ways. Arab men in East Jerusalem smoke in auto shops and dance around bonfires, and the camera seems to mock the bulging jeans of these brutish men who brag about betrayal and abuse or smugly explain the concept of a car wash. Yet Manna’s nuanced treatment of her subjects ultimately avoids condemnation. Their exuberant dancing is contrasted with images of hard labor, languorous smoking, and lines of poetry. The grimy, destroyed hands of a mechanic take on a tragically lyrical aspect—despite, or perhaps because of, their timeless oblivion—like the crumbling objects in the room.

A mound of stone bricks is piled in front of the flat screen like a derelict couch. The sculptures, crowding around like rowdy onlookers, reflect a current trend of chunky installations made from non-fine art materials—everyday objects wryly placed on downtown gallery floors. Yet Manna’s sculptures have an ancient archeological quality that evades the typical irony of this kind of installation. Curator Ruba Katrib notes in her text for the exhibition the symbolic importance of stone for Jerusalem, used as a building material in this contested area since ancient times. Indeed, many of these sculptures, such as the twisted metal car parts and piles of watches, are in direct dialogue with the video. This connection to Palestinian material culture shifts Manna’s sculptures out of their literal thingness toward a more imaginative plane of poetic specificity.

Jumana Manna: Menace of Origins is on view at SculptureCenter in Long Island City, New York, through May 12, 2014.

Vanessa Thill is an artist, curator, and writer based in New York.