In contrast to the haphazard chic that characterizes neighboring art spaces and boutiques, nearly everything about this one-year-old Lower East Side gallery is rigorously composed, from its visual identity to its intriguing program of contemporary and historical exhibitions, avant-garde film screenings, and lectures on urban issues. This exhibition—Liz Deschenes's first big New York outing since a delightful, restrained three-person show at Andrew Kreps in 2003—dovetails with the downtown venue's consistent presentation of (for lack of a better term) brainy formalism.

For several years, Deschenes has teased apart the photographic process in compelling ways, mixing and matching its steps in an attempt to explain the camera's magic without diminishing it and to remind viewers of the viral proliferation of screens in contemporary life. Here, seven new large-scale prints exploit the differences between the mechanical lens and the human eye, deploying moiré patterns to understated yet visually entrancing effect. (An earlier diptych, also included, illustrates an aspect of the dye-transfer process.) To create the works, Deschenes places perforated paper against a window and captures its image on an eight-by-ten-inch black-and-white negative, then duplicates the negative and superimposes two copies in an enlarger; a slight but deliberate misalignment creates the disorienting allover patterns that result. No two are alike; no system governs the misregistration. Deschenes has likewise printed the images in color, which adds subtle washes—typically of blue and green—that seem like the hallucinatory side effects of looking too hard. One can feel one's eyes striving to accommodate these (nonreferential) images, to ascertain what is figure and what is ground as the fields of white dots blur and snap into focus. Apprehending their detail is a physical, temporally expansive, rewarding event.