"I like that it's somewhere between a show and a studio," said Mr. Weeks. "It has the energy of a studio."

At the center of the artist's installation at PS1 is a working table, lit by a desk lamp, and a grouping of plants on the floor. Lining the walls are examples of his work: intricate carvings made from stacks of books or magazines that have been glued together. Mr. Weeks intricately carved the layered pages to look like the sides of mountains or coastlines, some of them topographically accurate.

Some of the shapes bear a resemblance to the terraced hillsides of Ollantaytambo, Peru, where Mr. Weeks grew up on a commune. "It was an international upbringing. There was a Canadian family, American, Danish and British families," he said.

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Mr. Weeks attended Bard College and now resides in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, in an old factory that he renovated with two other artists, Gandalf Gavan and Nicola Lopez. "A re-creation of communal living, so to speak," he said.

The theme of utopian societies runs through the room. A bright, colorful picture of a building in Brasilia is posted like a personal snapshot. On the walls are images—photocopied and transferred onto aluminum sheets—of grand structures, such as Buckminster Fuller's dome for the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal. One group of carved books—the spines are untouched—combines subjects such as urbanism, design of urban highways and utopia.

Though the lived-in look of Mr. Weeks's room suggests that items were randomly left laying around, the artist placed everything quite deliberately. As the exhibit goes on, he says he'll move things around. "I have until October. It will change. Care has been taken with the plants, but they will change. As I read new books, I'll carve them."

And if viewers stumble through wondering what it's all about, they don't have to overthink it. "As long as someone gets a feeling of the space, that's enough for me," Mr. Weeks said.

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Pia Catton