BROOKLYN—Erik Guzman’s finely crafted kinetic sculptures are both mysterious and challenging, and the three created for his current solo exhibition, “Who Made Who” at Brooklyn’s Front Room Gallery, are no exception. Much of Guzman’s work is participatory. Relying on motion sensors, his machines start spinning as you come close to them and, in each, a high wattage bulb lights up. While the three pieces have a similar metal armature, they have distinct aqua-resin casings and personalities: Beacon, the Watcher’s spinning bulb picks up steam and then slows; Beacon, the Decider’s wobbles slightly and moves at a constant rate; and Beacon, the Thinker’s moves at a more leisurely pace. The bulbs cast shadows across the room, and the beauty of Guzman’s forms and the delicate rhythm of his engineering create a Zen moment. Like some of Matthew Barney’s sculptures, Guzman’s intricately built devices could belong to an alien race from a parallel world.

In the second gallery, a series of laser-etched glass panels lean against the wall in wooden mounts. Incredibly thin and detailed lines form shapes and patterns that evoke gears, church architecture, Japanese temples, and Guzman’s own mechanical sculptures. On the opposite wall, the same imagery is repeated in backlit laser etchings on sheets of paper that are displayed on wooden frames reminiscent of ancient Japanese screens. The overall atmosphere of this show is like the laboratory of an old-fashioned, hands-on artist-inventor.

Below, Guzman suggests four exhibitions to see in Brooklyn:

1. Tadasky/Tadasuke Kuwayama: 1965 – 2008 tadasky at Sideshow, through October 19

“I walked into the show not knowing when the paintings where made — in 1970 or 2008? With retro in the air, I figured that the artist was simply revisiting something from the past. So I was surprised to find out that Kuwayama was one of the original Op art painters and that his works date from 1960 to the present. After a little back-pedaling I saw the work in a completely different context. I found it a nice change of pace while walking around Williamsburg.”  

2. Jonathan Brilliant: The Goldsworthy of The Coffee Shop Project at Dam, Stuhltrager, through October 12

“A very impressive installation. ‘The Goldsworthy of The Coffee Shop Project’ uses 50,000 wooden stir sticks, which are woven together into an amazing organic structure. The artist uses materials from his ‘natural’ environment, in this case the coffee shop, which creates a nice duality: natural wood is processed into sticks that are turned back into something that looks natural.”
   
3. Sarah Kabot: One by One; Shin Il Kim: Decoded Love; and Kwabena Slaughter: Oh, Very, Yes! at Smack Mellon, through November 9

“Smack Mellon has a strong three-person show featuring Sarah Kabot, Shin Il Kim, and Kwabena Slaughter. While their works are completely different in flavor, in one way or another, each deals with the distortion or manipulation of light.”

4. Gilbert & George at the Brooklyn Museum, through January 11

“For this final venue of Gilbert and George’s international touring retrospective, the duo has added an additional dozen or more pieces. Since they met in 1967 at St. Martin's College of Art and Design in London, they developed a style all their own in the form of photo collages and their best-known installation/performance: the living sculpture.”