The world as we know it must be coming to an end.

I'm half-serious. For all my grousing, I do understand what Ronay has been driving at since he left Yale. He's been talking about how it feels to be part of an empire that is about to fall. His vision has been airy, baroquely fucked up and internally inconsistent—just like the world we all negotiate. Structure doesn't matter. Everything's ugly and shiny at the same time. He depends on surreal fragments because it's about the simulation of the thing instead of the thing itself, with humans forgetting that they are human, and human flesh rising up to meet the challenge of being ignored, but you can't see this nastiness because everything is gleaming like an iPod. The fact that Ronay's work bugged the crap out of me for years and mostly looked like hype could have meant that it was working. I can't argue with the fact that it fit seamlessly into the zeitgeist.

The thing about this new show, with sculptures that are offering bowls and stacks of blocks and scraps of shelter, bearing somber titles like Observance and Of Host, is that it's just as real as the fast, glossy vision Ronay was offering in 2005. I feel very serious right now; we all do. And to walk around Andrea Rosen's gallery, knowing where Ronay is coming from and seeing what he is offering now, is to confirm that the destruction we are all wreaking has nothing to do with hype and is actually quite real.

This body of work wears its earnestness heavily. The tight craft that made Ronay's older work pop looks frumpy and Puryear when extended to more precious materials. But whatever; this show also opens a door. Fast glossy fragments that cleave the status quo were once just the thing, and now they are nowhere near enough. I applaud Ronay for seeing this, and I hope this show is the beginning of a vision that he will continues to further articulate. With even more risk, a pinch of actual lightness instead of light talk, and less dependence on what is already known about sculpture.