The Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore forms an improbably precise setting for a Biennale-concurrent presentation of works by the sculptor Barry X Ball. As soon as the church becomes visible on the horizon, Ball’s audience is thinking about the artist’s central themes of materiality and time.

Are these the “five easy pieces” to which the exhibition title (a reference to the 1917/1918 Igor Stravinsky composition and 1970 Bob Rafelson film) gestures? Perhaps they are not so easy after all.

Downtown/Uptown, co-curated by Mary Boone and Brett Gorvy, charts the exterior and interior geographies of these not-so-discrete domains.