NEW YORK—The number of serious galleries in Soho continues to dwindle, but down where Wooster crosses Broome, The Drawing Center still thrives, and—as this current show amply demonstrates—offers a program of exhibitions and events that is well worth the trip. Don’t miss this one.

Was it Carl Andre who liked art that disappeared when you weren’t looking for it? Well, here’s a variation on that theme: art that you can barely see when you first encounter it.

Eleanore Mikus has been around for a long time—she actually showed at the Pace Gallery in 1963 when it was still in Boston and was the subject of a perceptively titled 1991 monograph, Shadows of the Real—but I have to admit that this was the first time I had seen her work. And what exquisite work it is.

Since the early ’60s (and despite an extended fling with a rather childlike expressionism during the ’70s and early ’80s) Mikus has been involved in a love affair with the grid. This show, “From Shell to Skin,” celebrates that relationship.

There is just enough of an introduction in a few pictures that predate Mikus’s discovery of grids to give some context. Ortho (1961), a rather garish and modern Scandinavian-looking painting of orange near-circles on a dark red ground, hangs alongside a couple of pieces from about the same date when she accreted nails and staples and circular file paper strengtheners in a thick surface of translucent brown glue.

But then, in her raiding of the stationery cupboard, she discovered what has come to dominate her artistic imagination pretty much ever since. In the aptly titled Window I (1960), she utilizes philatelists’ stamp hinges—those little filmy-thin folded adhesive paper rectangles—that are fixed in not entirely regular rows beneath three daubed stripes of dark red paint.

From then on, the grid becomes her constant touchstone: regular grids, variations on grids, grids implied by parallel lines, grids obsessively-drawn or hastily-sketched, grids in notebooks, on little scraps of paper, and—in one case—measuring nearly nine feet high.

I couldn’t count how many pieces there were here. Certainly way more than 100. But this show is the reverse of monotonous, partly because Mikus is also a virtuoso of texture.

Many of these pieces are made simply by folding lines into paper, sometimes as few as four or five, more often in the hundreds—just fine little parallel creases. Elsewhere the folded paper is then painted or inked, or the surface is scored or scratched. Then there are collaged grids of various sorts, and—least successful in my opinion—grids hinted at in large-scale fiberglass pieces, where the surface is a like a heavy sheet thrown over an arrangement of square tiles.

In considering her range, it becomes obvious that Mikus is no Minimalist, despite the simplicity of her means and the resemblance of her methods to those of her contemporaries, including the far more celebrated Eva Hesse. Rather she derives an expansive poetry from regularity and any departure from it. With every minute you spend with these things the better attuned you become to their slightest variations. A little rectangle of folded paper painted violet takes on the luscious brilliance of a tropical sunrise.

For instance, an untitled work from 1968 that is smaller than a sheet of typing paper, made in red ink and crayon, reveals rows of little hearts running sideways to the main scribbled grid and seems suddenly like a celebration of new love. Another unnamed piece from the previous year, made from rose-colored fabric stretched over a little piece of board and kept in place by a crisscross of rubber bands, has the mysterious promise of a birthday gift.

This exhibition works perfectly in The Drawing Center’s simple classic Soho space. Don’t miss the pieces hidden behind the false wall between the main gallery and the offices, and give yourself plenty of time to appreciate the entire show. Mikus’s work doesn’t give up its pleasures quickly. It’s at The Drawing Center until Feb. 10—and I warmly recommend it.