Suneil Sanzgiri’s work challenges and reflects on histories. Water runs through it, so “reflects” is doing more than one thing here. A reflection can be a fairly accurate image until the surface moves. Then it stretches, folds, breaks up. The thing being reflected hasn’t necessarily changed, but your access to it has.

For Here the Earth Grows Gold, Sanzgiri’s first solo museum exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, the typography has some of that instability. At a distance, the letters have the weight and authority of something old. Up close, they become much less well behaved. Thick strokes taper sharply, terminals curl back in, and the capital G makes a surprisingly involved journey around its own interior. Reading is possible. Reading automatically is a little harder.

The forms take cues from the challenging, sometimes archaic lettering already in Sanzgiri’s work. An old-looking letter can lend a word a certain authority. That’s one way of reading these forms, until a curl or an awkward turn interrupts it. They also invite less useful thoughts: how far a stroke can wander and remain the same letter, or how much of reading is simply assuming that it will.