It’s big, it’s bright, it’s shiny—and it’s unavoidable. I’m looking at Kristin Walsh’s Engine no. 12, beautifully crafted from polished aluminum, on view in the round, centered in front of the second-story bay windows of Petzel Gallery’s intimate Upper East Side location. Upon cursory glance, it seems like a tight, titular form comprised of intake manifolds, cylinder heads and an engine block. However, there’s no grime, no fuel smell. Plus, it’s too perfectly reflective, offering images of viewers back to themselves from almost every surface and angle. Of course, it’s not an actual engine. But it’s not passively resting on a display pedestal like a classical sculpture, either. Instead, a pair of connected, telescoping metal tubes suspend this hulking gorgeous thing between the high, white plaster ceiling above and the bottomless black parquet floor below. I step back a few feet to take it all in. That’s when I hear a quiet, grinding noise emanate from this object. But it stops quickly. I walk around, peer into the three open manifolds—brushed, not polished—and I see a single, old-timey, red-headed, wooden matchstick lying down in each. The noise comes again. Now, seemingly by magic, the matchsticks are dancing and circling around the tubes, like erratic hands on a clock. The sound stops, and they drop dead.

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What just happened? It felt like a mounting, mysterious event but feelings, as they say, aren’t facts. And this massive, elegant, streamlined motor seems so very factual. To try to piece it all together, I proceed toward the seven additional sculptures nearby in Walsh’s solo exhibition, “The working end.” But before I appraise each one and drill down, I stop at the front desk. The gallery manager and the official press release proclaim the artist’s interest in the “mundane forms of public infrastructure” that her works refer to, which act as “overlooked modes of oppression.” I’m not sure I see that in this collection yet, though the evidence is growing.

The next sculpture I see is a smaller crank-case-like object nearby on the ground: shining and sitting pretty but grumbling. It, too, features matchsticks, but they are standing stiffly at attention—like birthday candles on a triple-tiered layer cake. Down the corridor stand three pill-shaped, vertical subway car handrail poles in various forms and finishes: straight and stripped with matches, knotted and shiny and, finally, looped like a lasso—ready to ensnare an unsuspecting........

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