Nancy Rubins transforms industrial, manufactured objects—such as mattresses, appliances, boats—into the building blocks of her physically commanding monumental sculptures. Acting as an intermediary between the past and future states of her chosen materials, Rubins hones the formal, rather than the functional qualities of the discrete components that make up a single, cohesive sculpture.

The recent Monochrome series, for example, features numerous and varied canoes and rowboats, arranged around a large steal armature, like so many leaves on the limb of a tree. Brimming with the entropic energies of a force of nature, her arrangements evoke a precarious equilibrium of objects in space, citing both the traditions of modernist American ...