Paintings, drawings, and the in between

The show demonstrates how far afield the definitions of drawing and painting can go, and how the lines between them can blur. Michael Zelehoski doesn’t simply paint: He deconstructs three-dimensional objects and reassembles them onto the two-dimensional picture plane, an astonishing feat of jigsaw puzzling. His “Blue Pallets’’ may look like a painting from a distance, but up close you see how he has affixed flat pieces of used pallets into the illusion of what they once were.

Likewise, Yanick Lapuh builds wood reliefs that appear more three-dimensional than they are, thanks to the clever use of paint and joinery. Lapuh applies the controlled precision of his artistry to a manic imagination. His cheeky “I Love You’’ depicts a leering devil waving fistfuls of daisies and crowded by fluttering doves. Matthew Rich constructs his abstract paintings out of cut paper and linen tape. His works, homely but lovingly crafted, defy the assumption that a painting is a pristine, unassailable object.

Among the more traditional painters, Harold Reddicliffe culls abstraction from exacting realism. His “Objects From Overhead’’ turns shadows and cables into a formal composition of shapes and lines. In Joshua Meyer’s quivering portraits, reality appears to collapse in a flurry of light, color, and brush strokes. Christopher Faust applies contemporary neuroses to 19th-century ideals of romanticism in his fraught depictions of figures in landscapes.

Monica Nydam takes a less ironic approach in her paintings of horses, made after she advertised on Craigslist for images of things people loved. Someone sent her 45 pictures of a horse named Minnie, and Nydam painted as if she herself loved Minnie. The untitled works captivate because they are as much about image making as sentiment: Each is broken into symmetric halves, with shadows often pixilated, and the horse deliciously blurred in motion.