Christopher Kurtz’s sculptures demand a tactile response in a strictly hands-off setting

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Natural light streams in through the long windows above the Belger Crane Yard Studios gallery. In the middle of the floor, a thorny bramble reaches for the opposite wall, anchored to the ground on spiny legs that untangle from the busy sculpture. Chaotic at first, the wooden “Singularity” begins to make sense the longer you study it. A seemingly random orientation of shapes and angles reveals its symmetries to the viewer who exercises patience. This most eye-catching piece sums up a lot of Kurtz’s work in the gallery: organic-appearing but finely controlled. (The show’s title, Orchards, comes from an assessment of Kurtz’s philosophy that he attributes to a friend: His practice is like an apple orchard — wild yet ordered.

The wood here is supple, sanded with a fine grain and an even hand, leaving no splinters on the bar stools, the footstool or the cane. Although the gallery setting forbids touching the art, the chairs look at least as comfortable and durable as anything on the market. “Windsor Chair,” one of Kurtz’s most formal pieces in the show, is exactly what it sounds like: a wooden chair that presents as stuffy but, up close, shows delicate handling and loving workmanship. Its counterpart, “(A)Typical Windsor Chair,” is what it promises to be; it looks like two Windsor chairs twisting uncomfortably away from each other, connected in a way that suggests an unwanted cell division. There’s wit layered into this work: How has a chair become caught up in an intimate struggle? Or is this where chairs really come from — budding from an existing chair?

This resurgence of old-style craftsmanship and trade learning is permeating the art world, but Kurtz isn’t simply following a trend. “Act Together,” a twisted cedar root painted white and sprouting from a pedestal log, explores a more poetic idea than the decorous Windsor chairs as it suggests two parts of a single source pursuing individual paths, only to converge again. One pivoting branch rises out of the stump and develops an offshoot limb that goes in the other direction. These two branches grow apart, turning and contorting on different paths skyward. When they meet again high above the initial stump, it’s as if not much has really changed.

The single leg of “Ginkgo Console” is beautiful simplicity, the only support for the piece itself. Balanced against the gallery wall, the work looks half-finished, as if half the table — second leg and all — has disappeared into the wall. Here’s the link between furniture and nature: A ginkgo leaf has but one stem attached to its fan, so why would a second stem be added to a sculpture depicting a ginkgo leaf? Kurtz’s attention to such logic sets his works here apart from mere furniture design. He doesn’t stop at alluding to a naturally occurring phenomenon when he senses it may be possible to re-create its important elements. Function is, by design, secondary, with beauty trumping all.

Orchards presents a certain dilemma. The desire to enjoy a casual interaction with these objects is at odds with the express instruction that they not be touched. You leave the gallery with an almost physical sensation of thwarted curiosity, an unsatisfied itch that distracts well after you’ve driven away. You resisted the urge to feel the smooth wooden surfaces, but you continue imagining what it would be like if only Kurtz’s objects could be made to function in your own space.