Looks good on paper

If you are going to make a beeline for any piece in Found and Folded at Get This! Gallery, then move immediately to the back of the railroad flat space. Tucked in a corner is the conceptual centerpiece in Nate Moore’s intriguing second solo exhibition.

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The work is untitled, but the meaning is clear.

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Moore has assembled a swarm of origami locusts on the gallery wall and ceiling that explode and splatter outward like some special effect from a Spielberg film. On a pedestal below the swarm is an opened Bible from which a chunk has been cut. The insects are crafted from those missing pages, sent out like agents of apocalyptic reckoning. Religion and aircraft coalesce into an eerie, minimalist evocation of end times in Found and Folded.

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Moore is a self-taught artist whose avocation is origami, or more precisely, found-object paper constructions crafted from an array of old science textbooks and slick magazines found at thrift stores and pillaged in regular Dumpster dives.

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As much as the biblical comeuppance hinted at in that swarm of cicadas, Moore’s origami jet planes suggest a cultural blitzkrieg heading on a military mission toward foreign lands. In Found and Folded, our belief system is locked and loaded, arranged like a Blue Angels configuration on a pencil grid as it heads off into the wild blue yonder.

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In his first show at Get This! Gallery, Moore dipped a toe into the juxtaposition of nature and humanity. He continues the notion with the two central motifs in Found and Folded: jet planes and cicadas. As icons of the human and the natural reduced to intricately folded origami sculpture, they prove especially interesting. The jets are pointed and aggressive, their very design suggesting speed and power. And the cicadas, with their wings splayed behind them, suggest natural design built more for survival than domination. Though his ideas could use some tightening up, and a greater connection made between the source material Moore chooses and the objects he creates, Moore’s show signals a promising direction in conveying a menacing, apocalyptic strain beneath the most unthreatening and delicate of forms.

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Found and Folded: Nate Moore. Through Jan. 27. Thurs.-Sat., 12-5 p.m. Get This! Gallery, 322 Peters St. 678-596-4451. www.getthisgallery.com.