Macrae Semans traverses the teeming streets of Ridgewood, Queens observing and gathering its everyday flotsam: wood, metal, bits of plastic flooring, etc. He then subjects these materials to varying degrees of intervention, assembling them into sculptural arrangements that will really knock your socks off. Alternately sad, calm, funny and mystifying, the works seem to arise out of a whimsical, quasi-categorical system of classification, the organizing principals of which remain vague.

His works are often presented in simple arrangements such as rows, piles, and loose groupings, whereby forms take on a language-like play of association. Located between found and made, accident and intent, his works evoke refined formal sculpture while showing an affection for chance arrangements. Post-minimalism, scatter-art and offbeat abstraction (such as the seemingly anonymous commissioned public art found in subways, airports and bus stations) are also relevant.

Try as he might to be a clinical junk-scientist, Semans cannot completely quell his innate set designer. This gives the work a palpable air of grubby theatricality and an aftertaste of dysfunctional design, often self-consciously highlighting modes of presentation and display strategies. Titles propose suggestions of means for interfacing with the work, and are sometimes a site for offhand humor, or represent a peek into the interior monologue of the artist as he works. Music is also of note here.

This is Macrae Semans’ second solo exhibition at Taxter & Spengemann. A 2005 graduate of UCLA’s MFA program, Semans has been included in group exhibitions at Taxter & Spengemann, Gavin Brown’s Passerby and Wallspace in New York, Champion Fine Arts, and the Hayworth Gallery in Los Angeles.