“Unified not Uniformed,” Navid Nuur’s current exhibition at gallery Martin van Zomeren in Amsterdam, provides viewers with an important cue in its title. Comprising seemingly disparate assemblages of works made from a variety of media—neon, video, c-prints, paint and found objects—along with the humorous and poignantly listed history and time in one work’s description, the exhibition appears more like a curated group show than the output of a single artist. But as the title suggests, this is the very point. The works are unified by the physical confines of the gallery space and the temporality of the exhibition, yet remain eclectic in form or style.

“Many of my pieces begin with an object or an idea that irritates me,” the Iranian-born Netherlands-based Nuur has previously stated. This seems apt given that the works on display do not necessarily abide by well-rehearsed artistic conventions and therefore might easily frustrate. For example, one neon work, Untitled (OMG) (2013) is purposefully blown out, the flame flickering furiously instead out of one end. Nearby, the largest sculpture in the show, Wiki Table (2012–13) is made from the loose combination of a marble slab, a mirror, a hot-water bottle, a twisted piece of wire and some vitamin D. Neither a standard piece of furniture, nor simply an objet d’art, it sits somewhere in between and only reaches its full potential through its engagement with the viewer. As indicated by the Wiki prefix, and the mirror’s placement at the sculpture’s base so that an image of the viewer is reflected, the work relies on user and ‘community-generated’ content to be understood.

This concept is also at play in the show’s most arresting and entertaining piece, a video titled What I call . . . (2013), that comprises a montage of found footage of different people uttering those very words followed by a litany of assertions, “ . . . a wave of clarity . . . retro futurism . . . globalisation Chinese style . . . task allocation . . . a pre-mid life crisis . . . a deranged high school reunion . . . the tyranny of precision . . . a personal take on special meaning.” Favoring the subjective “I,” with its interpretive capacity, Nuur effectively points to the deferment of fixed meaning, playfully encouraging the activation of the space between what the artist intends and the work’s reception.

“Unified not Uniformed” doesn’t give itself over easily, either as an installed whole or through a defining work. The objects themselves also don’t behave exactly as objects should. And while the exhibition isn’t the artist’s strongest outing to date, with works that are relatively modest and lacking some of the material appeal and visual punch of their predecessors, “Unified not Uniformed” rewards the patient viewer, one that doesn’t just take things for their surface appearance but is willing to engage in linguistic and material play. Nuur is pursuing a practice that sits somewhere between the object and the idea, calling upon subjectivities. Is this what objects look like in the complicated representational zone of democratic self-determination?

Unified not Uniformed is on view at Martin van Zomeren through November 23, 2013.

Susan Gibb is a curator from Sydney, Australia. She is currently based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.