Housed in a modest-for-the-Hamptons private residence on Sagaponack Road, this inventive, sprawling display of work is a biennial only if one keeps tongue firmly in cheek. The exhibition — curated by Bob Nickas and hosted by New York's Martos Gallery — is staged against the backdrop of a casual, unpretentious home, the summer digs of gallery owner Jose Martos and artist Servane Mary. When I arrive for a view on a Sunday afternoon in July, the house's summer inhabitants and guests (and their toddlers) are going about their normal business. The only hint that the interior is functioning as an art space is the detailed checklist inside.

On the front porch two chairs designed by Mary Heilmann sit near a Chris Martin painting (priced at $25,000) and an elaborate hanging sculpture by B. Wurtz. Two dainty-sized oil-on-board works by Jules de Balincourt, one reading "ENDLESS BUMMER," hang in the front room along with an Anne Collier photo over the couch and a ghostly, spare painting of a man's face by Richard Aldrich. Elsewhere in the house, it's difficult to tell which pieces are part of the biennial — such as the light fixture by Guyton/Walker in the living room, made of coconuts and light bulbs — and which ones, like a tank sculpted from clay by a child, are part of the domestic scene that we're happily intruding upon. The upstairs bedrooms hold pieces by Mai-Thu Perret, Ryan Foerster, and Lisa Beck, as well as a series of mutant collage portraits by Rachel Harrison. Most are hung with little attempt to spotlight them as discrete items, exactly as they would be in a private collector's house. The difference is that you're on your own, guiltily admiring the artworks without their bloviating owner trailing you from room to room.

Many more pieces are displayed in the yard and in an adjoining outdoor space around a swimming pool (which has a garden gnome sitting at its bottom, sans explanation). The outdoor installation is subtle, with some works, like Davina Semo's "Another Boy Genius Fucking Gone" (2011), merely propped against a fence, as if someone had forgotten it there. Stefan Gunn's mirror-based sculpture "Checkk Fluff" (2011), is haphazardly tossed onto the lawn at the base of a tree.

Placing works so offhandedly in such informal contexts doesn't detract from their identity as art objects, but it does make you more attuned to their monetary value: $3,000 for the Gunn; $12,000 for a sculpture by Justin Matherly made of concrete and walkers, resembling a gawky Star Wars robot; an astounding $80,000 for a Heilmann inside. It's a bit like seeing a sports car first under spotlights at a dealership and then parked in someone's driveway: Suddenly the unattainable becomes tangible, less exalted.

If there's one artist who embodies the aesthetic of the Bridgehampton Biennial, it's B. Wurtz, who has four pieces in the show. What could be more human and less pompous than his 1993 sculpture "Untitled," involving a sock and a metal can? A weird epiphany occurs when you stop regarding a simple artwork like that as an affront — "my kid/idiot brother could do that" — and start looking at it as liberating: "I could do that — and maybe I should." The Bridgehampton Biennial doesn't inspire reverence for contemporary art but rather brings it down to the level of the everyday. In the Hamptons, of all places, that is quite an achievement.