The Glassell School's Core artists-in-residency don't play by the rules. Fatima Haider droops an artwork over a gallery wall, Nick Barbee has published his own exhibition catalogue and Kelly Sears tells the tale of a high school horror film.

This eclecticism is the joy of the annual show of the eight Core fellow artists, currently on view in the Laura Lee Blanton Gallery at the Glassell School of Art. This is the product of one or two consecutive nine-month residencies, overseen by the program's director Joe Havel and associate director Marey Lèclere. And it's a don't-miss exhibition, as at least a few of these artists are sure to be scooped up by a leading local gallery or prestigious biennial.

If there's one topic that young artists love to criticize, it's tragic current events, preferably with a corrupt commercial or political edge. Several of the works in the Core show dwell on such maladies as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Middle East unrest and a weakening U.S. dollar. The latter issue is taken up by Clarissa Tossin, who has arranged two stacks of American bills and Brazilian reais on a table, juxtaposed with a typed statement of the currency's conversion rate on Feb. 7, 2011.

Visitors are invited to take a bill, at which point they will discover an intriguing graphic manipulation: The reverse side is the other nation's currency. It's a commentary on how American prosperity has literally flipped sides in the wake of a booming Brazil.

Indeed, several of these works were conceived to disorient you, the viewer. Lourdes Correa-Carlo has enlarged a photograph of the underside of a Hartford, Conn. home's front porch and mounted it on three separate panels that lean against the gallery wall, standing taller than most visitors. Leclère considers this work more an installation than a photograph — essentially, an architectural depiction of architecture.

"She's thinking about the question of space," Lèclere says. "It's meant to be confusing, estranging and defamiliarizing."

Apparently, those three words describe the world we're living in. In "Re-mappings," Tossin has inked the shapes of continents on balled up pieces of paper and then pinned the flattened sheets on the wall. Perhaps she's hinting at the arbitrary nature of drawing geographic borders, or the anxiety of a globalized world. In either case, it's among the show's most intriguing inclusions.

Interpreting the laser acetate prints by Steffani Jemison proves more rigorous. The inspirational present conditional phrase, "If I Could," is printed on transparency, obscured by underlayers of found paper and gesso on wood. Jemison explains that the series is inspired by violent events during the completion of her MFA in Chicago.

She writes, "My 14-year-old cousin Gregory Robinson was shot and killed outside his home. He was the 28th Chicago Public School student killed during the 2008-2009 school year." That death was followed by the murder of another Chicago student, 16-year-old Derrion Albert, who had printed the text "If I Could" near his workspace, motivating him to achieve his high grades.

Knowing this backstory, "Untitled (Transparency)" becomes all the more stirring. The same could be said of the secrets hidden in Julie Ann Nagle's "Breakdown of a Long Chain," a collage-like sculpture made of aqua-resin, mahogany veneered foam, polyethylene, gold space blanket, Bakelite, sandbags, wood and a tree.

The artist states, "Inspired by the invention of plastic from a byproduct (coal tar) and tradeship construction in the 17th century, I explore chemistry as a vector for trade and industry."

The male character protruding from the gallery floor is none other than inventor Leo Hendrik Baekeland, the inventor of bakelite, one of the first plastics. The scientist is positioned as a figurative trade ship's bowsprit, a reference to the character's spirit as akin to that of seafaring Age of Exploration naturalists.

According to Nagle, Baekeland established the dangerous perception of plastics as disposable consumables, arguably a tenant of American industry. Elaborates the artist, "Science continues to be used as a pretext for exploration and colonization. The same lands that were once mined for natural resources are now mined for human labor resources, and equatorial lands are most burdened by our industrial byproducts and waste."

Baekeland is rendered in a way that would make him seem otherwise anonymous (his looks have yet to earn him instant recognition), and the assemblage has a "Rent-a-Center" aesthetic reminiscent of just-bought luxury boats. The work contemplates idealism and impending natural destruction as the outstretched figure's hands are caught in a game of Cat's Cradle, a reference to Kurt Vonnegut's satire of science and technology.

No doubt, Nagle and her colleagues are staking out some serious conceptual territory. Yet with the right degree of persistence, the Core Exhibition can be a rewarding view on what the city's contemporary art practitioners are creating.

The 2011 Core Exhibition features the work of Nick Barbee, Lourdes Correa-Carlo, Fatima Haider, Steffani Jemison, Gabriel Martinez, Julie Ann Nagle, Kelly Sears and Clarissa Tossin. The exhibition is on view in the Laura Lee Blanton Gallery at Glassell through April 22.