“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!” Long before the character Jack Torrance in the Shining typed this sentence (and typed this sentence) into pop culture infamy, it has been a recurring idea in western literature for centuries. This theme crossed my mind after visiting the opening of Products of the Playful, a tightly organized show by Art + Method, a new gallery in Bushwick, smartly converted from lofty apartment to art/event space.

There is a focused intensity to this group selection, but the variety of processes and spirited experimentation are the overriding characteristics for the work by artists, Kirkland Bray, Adam Frezza & Terri Chiao, Kate Nielsen and Adams Puryear. The show’s title leads with the word “Products”, alluding to the artists’ connection to design and the applied arts. But this term, as used in mathematics, can also express a greater result achieved when multiplying quantities. Fittingly, each artist shows tandem bodies of work, where the interplay of drawing, collage, painting, environmental sculpture and ceramics heighten the senses, both the tactile and visual.

When approaching Adams Puryear, Color Study (ceramic ooze installation) it bears an uncanny resemblance to a pair of inverted hornets’ nest, or Klansmen with earthen hoods (think Philip Guston’s Discussion 1970). An irreverent and comical interaction, but now rendered as ceramic vessels, slowly releasing red and blue slime through their proverbial “pie holes” over the course of several hours. As companion pieces, his Battle Steins are essentially stylized beer mugs with brass-knuckled handles. Their raucous disposition is reinforced by the extreme, urban encounters depicted on their surface, as illustrated by his collaborator Kate Nielsen.

Kate Nielsen is also represented by a series of paintings or “paint peelings” which contain a seemingly endless number of minuscule spiritual forms, like God’s Eyes, resulting from the excavation of paint. The largest example is Consciousness is Not a Moonroof, 2015. Its concentric layers of acrylic present a small-bore view of the passage of time, yet are imbued with the color pallet and vastness of a western landscape aerial view. Her ink drawings of everyday objects, born from quick-fire studies over the course of 100 days, are a fun counterpart to the extensively layered paintings.

Kirkland Bray’s Stick Horse and Bucking Bronco offer the most structured imagery in the exhibition. Bray’s method of photo-collage finds it roots in the Bauhaus school and in particular László Moholy-Nagy. His cowboys are small scale, diminutive toys, the very opposite of the John Ford epic or Marlboro Country we have come to expect. With their outdoor environments stripped away, they are more like specimens to be studied, a rare and vanishing breed.

Adam Frezza and Terri Chiao’s elaborate sculptural environment, Golden Palm Cave Installation, is akin to an extraterrestrial landscape. A garden constructed entirely of vividly painted and formed paper, it is the most unrestrained, playful element of the show; a Willy Wonka inspired spectacle with a nod to the psychedelic. Included are small, plant-like objects called Lump Nubbins. Originally offered by the Whitney Museum of Art, these visual confections are the perfect opportunity to take a piece of the garden with you.

Products of the Playful runs through December 20th. Gallery hours: Friday and Saturday, 12-5pm or by appointment (and all appointments come with a cold beer!)

Art + Method | 236 Moore Street, No. 401 Brooklyn, NY (Morgan stop on the L)