Ranjani Shettar’s recent solo show, containing two sculptural installations and four woodcut prints, dressed the mundane in the garb of the mysterious. In Touch Me Not, 2006–2007, creamy-colored wooden beads are attached to a snow-white wall; their carefully fashioned, lacquered spheres balance on silvery metal rods. Like the bashful plant for which it is named, Shettar’s beadwork seems acutely sensitive to the viewer: The beads form undulating lines on the wall that seem to meet and merge while casting tiny, shuddering, bubblelike shadows.

For the second installation, viewers meandered down a