• Courtesy
• "Quilt" by David B. Smith

The works of New York City-based artists Fawn Krieger and David B. Smith both contrast with and complement each other in a canny dance of texture, pattern and color. This is evident in their current shared exhibition, "Home Bodies," at Brattleboro Museum & Art Center.

Krieger's wall-hung objects are composed of glazed and fired clay modules pressed into wet concrete so that the polychrome shapes become cemented together in a calcified ooze. The sculptures are modestly sized (the largest is roughly 24 inches tall) and consist of geometric forms that are clustered together in tight groups upon thick slabs that serve as supports. The space between the blocks, cubes and wedges is filled with gnarly bands of pigmented cement, vermiculite and epoxy.

Smith transforms found and custom fabrics into tapestries and soft sculpture. The prevalence of neon hues and clashing designs in his work conjures a distinct early '90s aesthetic — think "Pee-wee's Playhouse" furnishings or MC Hammer's pants. Smith's idiosyncratic style taps into a childlike quality that eschews so-called "good taste" in favor of unbridled expressivity. But his practice also leans into the history of abstract painting, summoning the likes of Lee Krasner and Carrie Moyer.

The title "Home Bodies" suggests domesticity, which is more obvious in Smith's work with its allusions to drapery, quilts and bedclothes. The association to home in Krieger's sculptures is more subtle. Her modular units occasionally take on the characteristics of tasteful midcentury home goods such as lamps, throw pillows or decorative tchotchkes. Krieger and Smith share the capacity for making the familiar seem strange and the unusual seem elegant.

The way the two artists utilize a sense of scale relates to the second word in the show's title. Smith's large-format work makes a viewer want to step back and take it all in, while the array of textures and fabrics inspires close inspection. With Krieger's self-contained constructions, it's necessary to zero in to understand their complexity and nuance.

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• "//44" by Fawn Krieger

Though the patterns in Smith's fabrics are generally nonobjective, bodily forms are printed on some of them, underscoring the corporeal thread. In "Playtime," a commercially produced throw blanket serves as the "canvas" for a dense patchwork of colorful adornments in myriad shapes and sizes. The printed motif of cartoonish arms clutching a yellow pumpkin-shaped form repeats throughout the piece. Bits of metallic material and bold patterns collide in a dizzying mélange. The work flirts with chaos but manages to remain cohesive.

Curator Sarah Freeman writes of Smith's work, "Its tactility invites the touch — indeed, sparks a desperate desire to touch." Apparently, the desire was too much for one recent visitor to restrain: Facing a piece titled "Vacation," which consists of two fabric panels hung from a metal wire, the gallerygoer began sliding one of the shower curtain-like sheets back and forth. Evidently, he was oblivious to the "Please Do Not Touch the Artwork" sign on the wall.

In Krieger's work, the oozing grout lines that bind the components invite associations to lava, excrement or tar. At times these clotted striations are grotesque. But in other instances, they are quite beautiful; in "//13," the grout is pigmented a rich burnt-orange color. The fiery material looks like coral or iron ore that winds around a cluster of checkerboard-patterned cubes. The overall vibe is Beetlejuice-era Tim Burton.

The designs Krieger painted on "//44" resemble dice on which the dots have bled and faded. A cluster of irregularly shaped, bone-colored blocks is assembled into a roughly 24-inch-tall cluster. The "dice" are squished into charcoal gray cement. Upon approach, a viewer might notice three small pastel-colored serpentine shapes embedded within the stacked, blocky forms.

• Courtesy
• "Playtime" by David B. Smith

Smith's "Quilt" features 24 roughly 8-by-10-inch rectangles, each adorned with a unique design. The piece reads like a grid of independent paintings; a bird, hand and face are among the images that leap out from frenetic abstractions. The scale of each quilt section is that of a typical portrait photograph one might find in a family home. This, in addition to the myriad associations that quilts evoke, imbues the piece with a sense of nostalgia.

Use of the grid is another commonality between Smith and Krieger. Much of Smith's practice entails quilt-like construction, which is essentially undergirded by a grid. Krieger arranges her sculptural components in irregular grids; even when they appear off-kilter, they have a sense of structure.

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• "//68" by Fawn Krieger

Yet Krieger subverts the rigid formalism of the grid in the process of squeezing her materials together. The way the concrete grout "bleeds," or the ceramic modules shift, introduces a level of unpredictability. For example, in "//68 (rebus shapes large)," quadrilateral blocks are stacked in a tight arrangement. The shapes are painted in a pink-and-black geometric motif, with thin, dark cement seams visible throughout.

Wall text for "Home Bodies" states that the idea for this show emerged from the isolation of the pandemic, during which "the concept and context of the home became a site for reinvention," curator Freeman writes. Krieger's approach to her work is cerebral and systematic, while Smith's seems more improvisational. The variety is welcome in this tightly curated exhibition. Yet the works overall convey a sense of lightheartedness. "Home Bodies" is a visual dialogue between two very different artists about the nature of process and materiality.