Peter Fischli’s new sculptures approximate the basic forms of city traffic lights, composing an infrastructure of vertical shafts and horizontal arms bearing suspended signals, which flash and change. These kinetic works signal strangely, each with its own particular on/off rhythm and colors, flashing white, orange, or lemon yellow. Sometimes, instead of electric lights there are opaque mirrors or simple discs of daylit stained glass. A few of the sculptures present only dangling black wires, unplugged. One of these is topped with a crest of simulated snow. Peter Fischli’s deviated, schizoid traffic lights sometimes suggest gallows. Or trees: symbols of life, or knowledge. We could also see them simply as abstract compositions of dots and lines. Or as psychograms: humanoid, diagrammatic. It’s a Constructivist forest transmitting a sort of Arecibo message from beyond, or within. The feeling is wintery and transcendent.

Fischli’s kinetic sculptures are constructed mainly of wood, glass, and cardboard, then painted. A colorful base coat has been calmed with many subsequent layers of differing grays and silvers mixed with champagne chalk. The vertical poles house digital controllers that program the signals.