NEW YORK—Claire Sherman’s self-titled exhibition, on view at DCKT Contemporary through August 22, is filled with paintings of lush foliage, steep cliffs, glaciers, and rocky terrain — imagery of grand natural scenes that brings to mind the writings of Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, Jean-François Lyotard, and other thinkers interested in a discussion of the sublime. Invoking the beauty and majesty of nature, the paintings project a romantic view of the natural world, and yet the absence of any human activity elicits in them feelings of emptiness and isolation

The exhibition, Sherman’s first solo show in New York, includes works that vary widely in scale. At 6 by 5 feet, Weeds II (2008), which depicts a loosely painted cluster of leaves with twigs, made by dragging a palette knife through thick areas of impasto, is massive in comparison with a row of 5 by 6-inch watercolors of hot springs, trees, and piles of sticks. The larger paintings allow the viewer to get lost in the landscape, while the smaller ones offer a more intimate way to connect to the natural world.

The works also shift between extreme distance and close-up, with many of the more scenic paintings, reminiscent of the 19th-century Hudson River School, reading clearly as sky, rock, and trees from far away, but at closer range falling apart into abstraction. Sherman adds to the American landscape tradition a fresh take on the conflict between abstraction and representation, which may explain why, at under age 30, she is already part of the UBS Art Collection in London and the Margulies Collection in Miami.

Hole II and Hole III (both 2009) each show a hot spring, one in a desert, the other in a rocky area sparsely populated with tufts of grass. The aerial viewpoint of the paintings makes the hot springs appear to be abstract forms floating in vast expanses of space. In Hole II, the bleached desert earth could also be an expanse of ice, or the tan background of a modernist painting with a blue ellipse in its center. In this way, the painting fluctuates between being place-specific and universal. Hole III has an otherworldly appeal, the water filling its hole a very unnatural, toxic-looking yellow, though the color actually results from the acidity of the spring on which the work is based. Its vibrancy is an eerie and refreshing surprise.

A similar shade is featured in Island II (2009), which also pairs a nature scene with color that appears unnatural and synthetic. The work commands attention, even at just 10 inches square, with its foreboding depiction of an island with one lone tree floating in a sea of acidic yellow, rendered in just a few brush marks. The water consists of thinly painted, sweeping strokes that show a blurry reflection of the scrappy pine, while the sky, island, and tree itself are more thickly painted, with parts of the tree made up of short, chunky marks. Island II evokes the emptiness present in Sherman’s other works, but it is also endearing, with its scrawny little pine in a caustically colored environment.

Here, the artist suggests some exhibitions she has seen and would like to see in New York this weekend and coming up:

1. Projects 90: Song Dong at the Museum of Modern Art, through September 7
“This show elicits a poignant conversation and interaction with the work that requires you to confront your own consumption of and relationship to stuff. The use of ordinary objects as markers in time hits a universal note. You’ll never look at the last remnant of toothpaste in a tube, your old shoes, or scraps of fabric the same way after this show.”

2. Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, through August 23
“These delicate medieval drawings are eccentric and reach across time to pull you into the world of the maker. They feel both ancient and contemporary, with a combination of the obsessive and the delightful. Check out the Anatomical Diagrams and The Four Winds Diagram, which feel both whimsical and intensely curious.”

3. Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, through August 16
“This is an incredible, must-see show for anyone interested in painting. Most surprising are Figure in a Landscape (1945), Man and Dog (1953), and Study of a Baboon (1953). The images of his source material provide real insight into his process.”