Sol LeWitt

Through Oct. 1. Printed Matter; 231 11th Avenue, Manhattan; 212-925-0325 , printedmatter.org.

Last week at MoMA PS1, an epic sprawl of artists’ books were on display at New York Art Book Fair, which was started by the nonprofit organization Printed Matter. You can still visit Printed Matter’s Chelsea location, however, and see more than 75 books by the conceptual artist and sculptor Sol LeWitt , one of the organization’s founders, in the show “Book as System: The Artists’ Books of Sol LeWitt.”

Mr. LeWitt was part of an art generation that explored alternatives to traditional studios and galleries. Instead, he developed rigorous “systems” that explored the rudiments of visual art and could be illustrated in books he made and published . Display cases here hold Mr. LeWitt’s books, each of which dealt with a particular theme: lines, circles, cubes, grids and colors. Very often Mr. LeWitt worked in an algorithmic mode , playing out all the permutations of a self-defined system or category.

The show, which starts with works from 1967, includes Mr. LeWitt’s contribution to a famous project, “The Xerox Book,” published in 1968 by the gallerist Seth Siegelaub. Mr. LeWitt continued working in book form until his death in 2007, the books often accompanying gallery shows of his spare geometric sculptures or immense wall drawings. Although the stripped-down systems here can seem dry to the uninitiated, the books show how simple ideas can be exponentially expanded (and reproduced and disseminated). The book form is bounded only by the artist’s imagination and modest means, rather than the physical walls of a gallery or the commercial art market system.

MARTHA SCHWENDENER