Her installation has the loose form of a fort. Like most forts, it is made from materials scavenged from the artist’s surroundings. Building supplies, paint, discarded crates, and weathered branches come together in precarious arrangements that function like large three-dimensional drawings. Granwell makes paper casts of trash and architectural elements as well, and these litter the site as shadows of their former selves. Her skeletal structures are scaled to the size of the human body, giving them immediacy and presence.

We get the sense, as we walk through the passageways set up in this makeshift haven, that we are both intruder and guest. Intruder, because what lies before us is in many respects the physical manifestation of a personal psychology: the architectural renderings of Granwell’s past projects come to life in this environment. But guest too, because the objects open themselves up to empathy through their distant familiarity. The inventive forms and their inherent fragility mimic the strange beauty of what we ourselves have left behind: collections of urban refuse the artist passes on her way to the studio have given her inspiration in their strange and spontaneous beauty. The exhibition title, Broken, to Bring Forth, hints at the metaphorical implications of these materials; through their impoverishment and reincarnation, Granwell presents us with vessels for examining our relationship to brokenness and renewal, to the cyclical nature of undoing and becoming.

Jenny Jaskey, who closed her Northern Liberties gallery in the spring to try life as an independent curator in New York, is still here in spirit, with an impressive group show she has organized for Tiger Strikes Asteroid called “No Objective.” Not coincidentally, the works of these five New York-based artists, all of whom use found materials and recycling in inventive ways, would have fit nicely into Jaskey’s hulking former space. As it is, they make out surprisingly well in the Tiger’s tidy quarters.

A close examination of Ivin Ballen’s initially unprepossessing wall sculpture will likely reveal it to be something entirely different from what you thought it was. Among other things, the duct tape supposedly holding it all together is an inverse cast of duct tape, painted that familiar lustrous graphite gray.

Skyler Brickley – using a small, conventional paint roller to apply long, uninterrupted, contiguous strips of black paint to the wall – has created a kind of decorative painting that allows for the idiosyncracies of memory foam, while its transparent application of black also manages to evoke painted or screen-printed renditions of strips of film (right down to what appear to be sprocket holes, produced again, apparently, by the foam’s memory). Yet another instance of Warhol’s reverberations in contemporary art.

The opposite wall of the gallery has been turned over to Ethan Greenbaum, who has covered it with sheets of paper printed with dummy type, into which another artist, David Scanavino, has inserted his rectangular blocks of newspaper pulp (talk about dire predictions for the newspaper industry).

Lisha Bai’s mesmerizing, slightly sparkly cube of black sand mixed with resin that’s presumably been cast into its geometric shape, is the unapologetic beauty of the show. Mounted on a tall glass pedestal, it suggests a relic of minimalism abducted by space aliens.

To view “Black Hole,” an absorbing video projection by Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib atKim Light/Lightbox, you must occupy just such a space — a chamber dark enough to divest you of your bearings. Before long, the aesthetic of withholding that visually characterizes the 7 1/2-minute piece becomes processed, experientially, as an ethic of confinement. 

The space is hot; its air feels dense. What is projected on one black wall is minimal, indeterminate, fleeting: the slow-motion hover of a hummingbird, a pair of bare feet, an illuminated blank sign, a quivering spider web, old footage of something traveling fast and leaving a trail of dust. A soundtrack layers gentle percussion and droning synthesizers, producing something between dirge and trance music. This induced state of unknowing suggests a deprivation chamber, a cell. On screen, an eyeball appears briefly to check on us. Metaphorically, we are stuck in Plato’s cave, catching only glimmers, shadows, reflections of actuality. 

With “Black Hole,” the Philadelphia-based artists (who also work independently) stage an experience both provocative and destabilizing. 

A sound piece in the gallery’s courtyard is interesting but less powerful, in part because it must compete with the continual whoosh of street traffic. Its mix of film noir dialogue snippets and musical fragments hints at political intrigue. The term “patriotism” is uttered by one voice, then cynically dismissed by another. As in “Black Hole,” not all is decipherable, and that elusiveness is part of the work’s appeal. In both works, Hironaka and Suib create a kind of environmental montage — restrained, tense and portentous.