Suyama Space feels like it’s become inhabited by an overgrown science experiment,

Suyama Space feels like it’s become inhabited by an overgrown science experiment, perhaps one designed to measure gravity by way of weights at the end of a network of pulleys. Philadelphia-based Carolyn Healy and John Phillips have constructed a physical drawing from rods and pulleys, punctuated every so often by a brightly colored object (a weight, or what looks like an industrial sanding attachment), as well as by intermittent sound and video. The rods are hung from the ceiling, making glassless window formations and the outline of a box opening toward the floor. Metal weights dot the room with color: An orange ring (220 lbs.) looks sourced from an old-school barbell. An oblong weight hung head-height tells its own number in scrawled yellow: 11½ lbs. Disks hung face-up like plates tell their figures, too: 6.6 kg, 6.7 kg. And one ink-blue stained disk simply hangs foot-height, worn and beautiful. I wanted this installation to be touchable, not quite so metaphorical, this MetaphorM. (I was tempted to pull on it, actually, to test those pulleys and get the weights swinging.) This piece is very good at making you pay attention to the space. The darkened floorboards. The paint peeling from the beams overhead. The ladder of skylights creating so many rectangles of sunlight. For the first time, I noticed old paint on the Eastward beam spelling out “CARS STORED AT OWNERS RISK.” This piece shows off the room it’s in, an old auto shop. (I’d forgotten.) There’s a little movement, too, aside from the video. One large circular lens rotates slowly, catching images of the ceiling on its round face, and tinting the video that passes through it a pale green. Free. Mon.-Fri. Ends Aug 22. Mondays-Fridays. Starts: June 6. Continues through Aug. 22, 2008