Two shows at Locks Gallery – one retrospective and one of new works – are at odds with one another on all three floors of the spacious building. On the first and third floors is “Synecdoche” by Nancy Graves, a look back on the late artist’s career via large-scale paintings, drawings and a few sculptures. This body of work coincides with a major, unprecedented exhibition at the Ludwig Forum Aachen, Germany. On the second floor, artist Rob Wynne creates installations and objects that reside as much in the historical and natural as in the realms of fantasy for his bombastically titled “The Lure of Unknown Regions Beyond the Rim of Experience.” Nancy Graves, “Paleoaegyptus.”

For Graves, a break from the era of Pop Art and Minimalism found her examining all manner of forms found outside of pop culture and formal abstractions. From satellite maps, to animal motion studies, and scientific illustrations, Graves pored over a multitude of sources to cull starting points for her paintings. In the first floor gallery, her whitish canvases scramble with lines part bacterial and part contour map. Spray-like mists and hazy structures lie beneath these thick, crisp trails of oil paint in works like “Paleoaegyptus.” Here, the mashing of what appears to be an indistinct aerial schematic of columns behind the imprints of fossilized frameworks reference the ancient by way of distant civilizations and times when humans were little more than forest floor mammals struggling to survive.

Nancy Graves, “ABC.”

On the surface, these works are heavily abstract and conceivably just expressionist pieces, but with a little keen analysis, their origins and inspirations provide us with insight into just how far we as humans have come. Aside from these roots, their bright colors and wiry shapes draw us inward to a place that is highly introspective and mystical, especially compared to the scientific and topographic images from where they arose.

Nancy Graves, “Triangle.”

Speaking of wiry, the few sculptures included in the exhibit cross over with the two-dimensional works by way of their thin, precarious forms and, in the case of “Triangle,” actual pieces of sterling silver bent and warped into a creature which staggers about on three legs instead of two or four. The fact that these wire-frame constructions predate the proliferation of 3D imaging and digital layering makes them particularly poignant, even in their modesty. Her sculptures on the third floor, however, also include found objects, taking a slight step backward to the readymades of early-20th-century contention.

Rob Wynne, “Rock.”

Wynne, for his part, scatters the floorboards with hunks of blackened rock which could have easily been thrown from some unseen quarry detonation. They are carefully spaced around the floor, though, and upon close inspection, flecked with sparkly bits of glitter. Are there diamonds in the rough here? The answer is apparently yes, since these shiny parts of the otherwise unremarkable coal black stones are actually diamond dust. Carbon takes many forms, and Rob Wynne makes us aware that even the most mundane has its extraordinary side.

Rob Wynne, “THE LURE OF UNKNOWN REGIONS BEYOND THE RIM OF EXPERIENCE.”

The subtle sheen of these not-quite-gemstones is countered by walls full of hand-poured and mirrored glass butterflies which, instead of flitting and fluttering, hang solidly in place and only change with the light as the viewer moves. These pieces are more like molten metal than metamorphic insects, and their reflective cousins in the space capture similar effects through less entomological pursuits. “Wave” provides hues of blue and green in splashing ripples of glass as well as whirlpools far more smooth and steady than Homer’s treacherous Charybdis. Another glass work melts down toward the floor, managing to form the very title of the show somewhere just before it becomes an indecipherable blob. This trickle of fabricated harmonic convergence really summarizes Wynne’s idealism and humor quite concisely.

Rob Wynne, “In the Air.”

Elsewhere, Wynne provides far off castles in the clouds with kitschy captions not unlike the arbitrary photo/text mash-ups found circulating around websites like Tumblr, drawing comparisons between the idyllic Disney-esque scenes and their contemporary overly romanticized counterparts. A flaming orange ribbon is somewhat of a shot from the hip as far as consistency in this show goes, but the image itself is quite warming, if dark, compared to the rest of the exhibit. Overall, Wynne provides insight into a fantasy world which both hides under rocks and works its way out of the watery deep to meet us somewhere in the middle ground of an art gallery; more than a humble chunk of rock, but not the exquisite structure of a castle in the sky either.

Both shows will be on display at the Locks Galley’s Washington Square gallery through January 30.

Locks Gallery is located at 600 Washington Square South, Philadelphia; [email protected]; locksgallery.com.