Waking up, then seeing the forest for the trees

Seen here: promise Every summer, grad students at local art schools stage “Boston Young Contemporaries,’’ a sprawling juried show at Boston University’s 808 Gallery. It’s always a hash of things, some bright, shiny, and promising, others easily forgettable. Joel Brown’s “Untitled, Untitled’’ caught my eye partly because, at the size of a postcard, it runs headlong away from the large-scale canvases that many of his cohorts at BU specialize in (they have bigger studios than at most art schools). It’s tense narrative at a wee scale (a captivating combination), a loosely painted scene of three men in blue with goggles perhaps interrogating a naked man.

Cathy McLaurin’s weirdly fascinating color photo “Sawry Head Application’’ depicts a woman with stuff - a teacup, an antler - affixed to her head with packing tape, which pulls up her nose and twists her skin. She looks monstrous and reined in. Alexander Harding’s photo “Oil Spill’’ is delicious because it’s gorgeous and ugly at once, shimmering, reminiscent of the rough texture of an impastoed abstract painting, and all about the mess oil makes. Claudia Mastrobuono’s sculpture “Weight’’ appears to be a stone in a net strapped to a large egg, seeming to pull at it - a picture of stress, tension, and relationship.

Aris Moore’s droll drawings such as “Red Flannel Robe’’ capture people who are defiant, vulnerable, and somehow unformed, with well-defined features but misshapen or uncontoured heads. Painter Anne Buckwalter plays with expectations of space and scale in works such as “Backyard,’’ which features tiny houses in tubs beneath a clothesline upon which clothes are hung with hangers, and a patterned blanket is tacked to the sky as if the sky were a wall.

Chelsey Wood’s disturbing “Small Spaces’’ paintings each jam two naked women (they all look the same) into open wooden crates. It’s a picture of trapped negotiation, but what struck me more than the pained subject matter was Wood’s wonderful facility painting skin tone.

On the more abstract side, Michael Pfleghaar’s mixed-media painting “Rock 2’’ grabs with its hints at representation. He captivatingly depicts a flattened, stretched wooden chair. He paints the wood grain in places, but also uses wood laminate, shuffling planes like playing cards against a flat pink ground.

“BYC’’ is always sketchy and too big, but what a satisfaction, down the road, to come across an artist you saw here first.

Cate McQuaid can be reached at catemcquaid@gmail.com.