Most of the work on view was made in the past three months, but to say that these artists were starting from scratch is not quite accurate. Several have video footage of the towers' views and interiors, which they incorporate into haunting work. Laurie Halsey Brown projects now unreal harbor vistas onto propped-up sheets of glass, while Justine Cooper translates Tower One's light patterns into a DNA-based installation—a gesture that amounts to passing on the building's genes.

Among the artists who had to begin—so to speak—at ground zero, an elegiac mood prevails. In Kara Hammond's drawings from memory of Tower One interiors, graphite shading carries unexpected weight. Iranian-born Mahmoud Hamadani's Ode to New York resembles a crumpled Sol LeWitt, its white open cubes piled together at haphazard angles.

To judge from the number of architectural motifs, the WTC buildings dominated the studio experience as they did the New York skyline. The only piece to feature a human element is Carola Dertnig's Revolving Door. In this nine-minute video of a Trade Center entrance on a typical day before 9-11, commuters shuffle around, bumping into one another and struggling with luggage. It's this simple ground-level scene that looms largest, something utterly quotidian made suddenly monumental.