Ed Mayer makes precise structures. No, that’s not quite right—Mayer’s structures are precise, piles of wooden laths, criss-crossed log-cabin fashion. In the six major works exhibited recently along with several drawings and prints, it became apparent that the artist does not so much impart mathematical clarity to his materials as draw that accuracy from their physical limits.

In a work like Glide, 1978, we are acutely aware of the delicacy of Mayer’s method, of fine boundaries traced between the friction of the nubby wood surface, the weight of the cross strips and the pitch of each upright.