With “Sublime Air Clot,” 1993, an installation of ten sculptural wall ensembles that hold various fluids, foods, and gases percolating through a system of laborataory jars, surgical tubes, and beeswax replicas of such objects as basketballs and aortalike heart valves, Rob Craigie achieves a brilliant synthesis of energy and entropy, effectively blurring the distinction between open and closed systems.

As metaphors for the body and its functions—including digestion, elimination, and even memory storage (or loss)—Craigie’s sculptures generate energy as a by-product of entropy. A drying “potato