Are things weird? I think things are weird. Flip on the news and another law of causality is executed out back. Widely held moral maxims are tossed to the dollar bin. The universe is and has always been unknowable, and yet somehow that infinitesimally thin slice of known takes return trips to the cheese grater. But at least we have photography, right?

Drawing from his two books The Only Dog I Hate and I’ll See You In The Branches in his debut photography exhibition To Make A Photography Exhibition From Scratch You Must First Invent The Universe, Paris-based American photographer Jordan Reyes wrestles with a many-headed untethering, experienced through abjection in the face of sublimity — both macro and micro — and the isolation of being a foreigner. But not all untethering screams “Guys, I have depression.” Animals and humor, too, become vehicles for reorientation, as does wonder, often all at the same time.

For this exhibition, Reyes approaches image-making and storytelling through mixed media, using digital prints, dark room prints, sewing, and collaging to interpret and reinterpret his photographs in novel ways, seeking to further his own understanding of what they show. This is functional art-making, done in the pursuit of clearing away a mote of dust from existence’s grand, mysterious, asymptotic tapestry. It’ll probably stay dusty. But even Sisyphus always did a solid day’s work.