Installation view

Photograph courtesy Feature Inc.

In art, the relationship between making and selling is often conflicted. But not for Nancy Shaver, whose harmonious show titled “Retail” pairs recent sculptures with objects from Henry, a store the artist runs in Hudson, New York.

The materials and processes of Shaver’s sculptures are humble and methodical: Small, wobbly-looking blocks of wood are painted with bright house paint or wrapped in found fabric, and then grouped into colorful grids. The assemblages hang on the wall in skewed wooden frames or rest atop wheeled carts. Distributed among the sculptures is a collection of antiques, ranging from the unusual (a polychrome ceramic pig) to the banal (a milk crate full of rusted rearview mirrors).

The sculptures and cash-and-carry objects interact casually in the cluttered installation: A white sock is draped over a low cube of cloth-covered blocks; an ink drawing on silk hangs on the back of a beat-up metal rocking chair. In some configurations, the sculptures function as display elements for the found objects; in others, the found objects serve as mere finishing touches for the sculptures.

When faced with contemporary art that nods to its own status as a commodity, viewers are conditioned to look for critique. But the combination of art objects and objets d’art in “Retail” seems intended not to question the relative value of each, but rather to make a case for their affinity. As the poet Ann Lauterbach puts it in a statement accompanying the exhibition: “We, Nancy and I, share a love of necessary objects…We believe, also, that art is necessary.”—Roger White