Mathew Cerletty’s third solo show takes its name from the famed Frank Lloyd Wright woodland retreat in Pennsylvania. Across from the gallery’s entrance, an understated drawing of the house crosshatched in black ballpoint pen and tightly framed in green, introduces a show with a unique and honest visual language. The Fallingwater drawing, isolated from a larger context and with even-handed aesthetic choices, elegantly negotiates the subject’s inherent significance. As an approach, this piece is emblematic of the way this show handles broad issues such as identity and American culture.

Known as a figurative painter, here Cerletty’s method of reducing the body to elemental shapes marks a shift in his work. Paring down Leonardo’s St. John into a solitary gesture, the artist repeats the pointing hands and single shirtsleeve on two nearly identical canvases. Alone in the back gallery, a large-scale painting depicts another partial figure, hands frozen in gesture. Designed for the room, the work creates a striking spatial relationship between the floating figure and a deep matte gray expanse. Along with the compositional choices, the layering of isolated elements, including a continuous blue border, confidently rendered brown hands, and deliberately crude black marks, establish a carefully balanced tension. Similarly, the push and pull between working from observation, spontaneous drawing, and purposeful abstraction, gives a seemingly flat-looking work dynamism and depth.

These and the other works in Fallingwater, including Cerletty’s first sculptural and text based works, have a visual immediacy and engage the viewer in a richly layered interplay. The fluid way each piece handles its subjects suggests a cohesive open-ended narrative.