You know how kids sometimes are more impressed with the wrapping paper, molded Styrofoam and crisp cardboard boxes their toys come in than with the main event itself? Walead Beshty is that kind of artist. His materials may be considered traditional (photography, sculptural installation, prints on paper); however, his use of them is anything but. For “Walead Beshty: Processcolorfield,” his first solo show at the venerable and progressive Regen Projects, he presents selections from several new series that wrest impressive, sometimes beautiful objects and images from the unlikely clutches of discarded work-process and ephemera from the business end of art-making. Copper wall sculptures are made of plating that had been installed on gallery desks, with the abstract patterns and organic clusters of smudges and marks in the patina resulting from human interaction. One piece is reconstituted from the pulped and shredded bodies of rejected works, while the photographs or, more properly, photograms, were made entirely inside the darkroom, and hence their slatted, processional abstract color fields depict nothing but the accidents of their own inception. In these and other series, Beshty combines a tongue-in-cheek post-modernism with a thoughtful investigation of what people don't see when they contemplate a work of art.

Sat., April 16, 6-8 p.m.; Tuesdays-Saturdays. Starts: April 16. Continues through May 14, 2011

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