Some art is just luscious. It shines, it seduces, it's a joy to be around. If it's good art and you look at it long enough, it will be more than simply lovely; there are concepts and compositions to consider. If there aren't, the work turns merely pretty. If, on the other hand, that delicious entry point sustains its pleasure because the art is also something to reckon with, you're in luck.

Marietta Hoferer, a German-born, New York-based artist, and Jason Young, a Canadian, have shows in galleries on Harrison Avenue that both tantalize and hold up to scrutiny. They complement each other: Hoferer offers up white-on-white works on paper at OH+T Gallery; Young shows color-rich, nearly sculptural paintings at Clifford-Smith. Both artists have a deep concern for surface and reflectivity. Both use workaday materials to conjure almost magical experiences for the viewer.

For Hoferer, the material of choice is strapping tape: cheap, striated, and shiny. She cuts it into tiny pieces and builds patterns with it over a graphite grid. The tape picks up the light and shimmers as you walk by; the more complex the pattern, the more subtle the interplay of shadow and light over the surface. These works nod to modernism, and, in their intricate designs, to centuries of weaving. One piece sticks to verticals and horizontals; it's austere, but appears anemic beside the layered geometries that appear in the other pieces.

The best part of Hoferer's work is a wall installation with 40 separate pages formatted in a grid. Here, the taping looks most like tatting: These could be lace doilies, or enlarged snowflakes -- no one like another. The piece bodily engages the viewer: you have to walk to and fro, duck, even jump to get the full flavor of the way light passes over it. Sometimes it splatters over a design, as bright as sun on water, but in crystalline patterns. Sometimes it looks like white gold; sometimes it's a shadowy taupe.

Taping is exacting and exhausting work, and for all the time she puts in, Hoferer creates art that feels a glimmer away from vanishing. For the viewer, it's well worth all that effort.

The sensual imagery is hard to avoid with Young's paintings: He aims for the senses through his finesse and his materials. It's impressive work, if not quite as intellectually rigorous as Hoferer's.