While perhaps it's true that immensity automatically commands attention, delicacy should not be denied its rightful place in design. The Geological Frame series by Huy Bui, represented by Patrick Parrish Gallery, caught my attention exactly for its slim structure.

These brass tables-Another Land occasional tables and Inverted Lands console-are mere outlines, as if they're the ghosts of tables. But just after the thin brass frames haunted me, I shifted my focus to Bui's knotted wood slabs, which spread like continents across the empty space of the table frames, creating one beautifully fragmented surface.

With their jagged wood slabs and shiny metal bars, Another Land tables juxtapose texture and scale. The effect is almost talismanic, like an amulet with a large gem inside a delicate setting.

Inverted Lands has somewhat of a different appeal, as its wood slab is monolithic, burled, and stretching from one corner to another. The underside of the wood in Inverted Lands recalls a seafloor topographic map-or, as the name suggests, upside-down hills and valleys.

For more information on the work of Huy Bui, visit www.patrickparrish.com.