Calm without a storm

Ah, daydreams. “As the sun jumps,’’ she concludes, “my anger returns; I want a language without pronouns.’’

Horn’s small drawings using pigment are entirely without interest. Her large, labor-intensive works made by cutting, splicing, and pasting, with pencil notations that read like diary jottings, are better. But unlike the works of Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, or Bruce Nauman, all of which they vaguely recall, they lack presence.

Horn is at her best in the realm of sculpture. The pink cube on the ground floor near the ICA entrance is a solid block of glass, reputedly one of the biggest in the world. When you get close and peer into it from above, your vision bends and warps, and you’re instantly reminded that glass derives from molten sand.

Two circular disks also made from solid cast glass, titled “Opposite of White,’’ are similarly luscious. The first version is smooth and gorgeously translucent; it accepts and somehow liquefies the light from the nearby harbor. The second is made from dark glass, which seems to have pooled and wrinkled near the edges of the upper surface, while its sides have a chalky texture and vertical striations.

These are works that, even as they relate to the history of minimalism, feel at once singular and poetically related like very little else in the show.

“Paired Gold Mats, for Ross and Felix,’’ nearby, places two rectangular sheets made from pure gold, one on top of the other. The piece has a poignant history: It was made as a tribute to the artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his lover Ross Laycock, after Laycock died from HIV/AIDS.

When seen from the harbor side, the light reflects off the lower sheet to create a tiny pocket of dazzling orange that seems set to burst into flame. The poetry and eroticism of the piece are self-evident, but its formal restraint is just as eloquent.

But maybe restraint is valued too highly at the ICA? After all, we can’t all lounge around on the grassy knolls of Iceland. It’s a crazy world out there. I am not asking for bad-boy antics or cheap spectacle. I simply yearn for something - anything - that might allow for a little chaos, something a little unruly, a little wild.

Sebastian Smee can be reached at ssmee@globe.com