In the desert where I live, rusty junk—spent bullet cartridges, empty beer cans, abandoned cars and trucks, decrepit appliances—is as much a part of the environment as cacti and Joshua trees. I don’t know why, but all that junk scattered around is strangely reasoning, comforting almost. Perhaps that is because it represents a trace of humanity in a landscape that can seem immeasurably hostile. Or perhaps there’s something else: a feeling that these things falling apart in the sun have their own spirits, afterlives of their usefulness waiting to be revealed.

Viewing Sarah Perry’s exhibition “Seeing

In his recent show, Martin Kersels wrestled with questions about how we navigate the world, addressing complex issues of awkwardness, safety and danger, and fear and discomfort. With a vocabulary taken from Conceptual art, performance art, slapstick, and dance, he exaggerates the embarrassing racket we make bumping and stumbling through life housed in our own too, too solid flesh. The work owes its unique perspective to Kersels’ knowledge that we are both privileged and doomed to lumber through the world as blobs of thinking, breathing meat.

The show’s centerpiece, Loud House (all works 1998),