From its European papier collé origins, collage has typically been the act of overlapping and conjoining unlike materials. Here, in several of the sections, the negative space between components echoes crown shyness in a tree canopy—more in the tradition of Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas than, say, Ernst.

The overarching title is arbitrary. The first section became “Air” only after noticing an image from airline safety brochures had made its way into each composition. (Those curious rebuses on how to pretend not to die when your plane is smashing into the ocean.) “Air” then suggested the overarching four elements. Each image in “Fire” contains a tiny matchbook cover. With “Earth” the rules, for whatever reason, became more specific: each cluster had to have a vintage sepia photo, a trilobite, a cave or doorway, a sphere or circle, and a bit of illustration depicting the age of dinosaurs. “Water,” the last of the four, is admittedly didactic: scenes of a lost civilization (here, Pompei), blue acetate invoking rising waters, counterbalanced by netting, flotsam, and bits of safety rope.