Charlie Engelman at Château Shatto

The other polymer forms in Pith proved even more slippery, their possible referents warped and stretched into a distinct formal lexicon. In Traveler (dusk), a blue frame contains a Millennial-pink undulate tendril, a layer of flocking velveting its surface, its form falling somewhere between a human tongue, a vibrator, and a succulent plant leaf. Heart talk is similarly confounding; tied together with a dangling black neoprene cord, a bundle of pale, round-edged urethane foam tubes rest on a blood-colored, cylindrical plinth. Coated with acrylic paints in Googie pastels, the smooth, seductive surfaces of these works reminded me of the 1960s California Light and Space artists—who, like Engelman, shaped industrial materials into minimalist forms with hyper-sleek, polished finishes. But while many of the sculptures the Light and Space movement produced functioned as (sometimes literal) prisms through which the viewer’s perceptions were dispersed and refracted, Engelman’s dense foam and flocking conjures the enticing haptics of retail displays. Instead of melting into their environment, these objects call out for attention, even touch. The endless plasticity of foam makes these glancing, associative links possible, as each of Engelman’s forms seems to absorb myriad possible references, then scramble and remix them.