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THE KNOCKDOWN CENTER This refurbished 19th-century brick factory compound at 52-19 Flushing Avenue (at 54th Street) in Maspeth, Queens, initially produced glass and then prefab, or knockdown, doors. Now, four years old, it is its own kind of strange hybrid. Overseen by the artists Michael Merck and Tyler Myers, it survives by renting parts of its 60,000 square feet for weddings, performances and other events. But along with Vanessa Thill, the two also oversee noncommercial art exhibitions. The best of the three current shows is “Transactions,” organized by Carolina Wheat and Liz Nielsen, who run Elijah Wheat Showroom, a small Bushwick space. They invited artists to contribute a favorite object and explain its importance. Nearly two dozen responded, including Carol Bove, Lisa Yuskavage and Yevgeniya Baras, and their often telling selections hang above little rugs and pillows that invite intimate contemplation. One of the most tangible effects of this barely-visible show is the hand-drawn map by Mr. Merck. In the courtyard, the capable sculptures and paintings of John Furgason, Serban Ionescu and Carlos Little all gain from being displayed in a romantic ruined boiler. A two-person show introduces the work of Anna Mikhailovskaia, a promising young Brooklyn sculptor, and John Schacht(1938-2009), a little-known Chicagoan, whose watercolor-gouaches of patterned biomorphic forms expand the legacy of the Hairy Who. The Knockdown Center brims with unrealized potential. It already has a restaurant.

I don’t think I’ve ever had my breath taken away in New York the way I did when I first set eyes on the not-for-profit artist-run operation in Brooklyn known as Knockdown Center. Not only did I not feel like I was in New York, I remembered the jealousy I always feel when I’m in Berlin or Los Angeles, walking in off some street through an unassuming doorway to a hidden huge courtyard and a magical vast building for art. I was staggered at what I saw, and then starting seeing, as possible art-world futures. New York must have a lot of derelict industrial spaces like this, in Maspeth and elsewhere, I thought. It was the most hopeful real-estate moment I’ve had in New York since the days of the East Village in the early 1980s (or maybe since galleries settled Chelsea in the 1990s). Somehow the man who saved Knockdown Center from developers coveting the site found a way to transform this magnificent 50,000-square-foot former door factory into a “radically cross-disciplinary” space devoted to “diverse formats, nourishing experimental impulses, questioning traditional notions of authorship, cultural production, and reception.” The space also “accepts proposals” for shows. You can propose something. I met an artist who did and the show is there now.

A serious conversation on the topic of play appears to be at work in the two-person exhibition, Anna Mikhailovskaia and John Schacht, currently on view at the Knockdown Center. With very few right angles or orderly readings available, the show calls into question larger assumptions about the association of irresponsibility with playfulness, the assumed randomness of organic forms, and predilections toward linear thought.

“What’s in the bottle?” asked a security guard suspiciously as he patted down my pockets for drugs or weapons, taking a sniff of my bottle of flavored seltzer. “Um, water,” I replied. Getting interrogated by security wasn’t part of the show, but it was a fitting start to “Authority Figure,” Monica Mirabile and Sarah Kinlaw’s supremely ambitious performance art piece about obedience and authority, which took place on May 20-22.

“Mami Wata, literally translated as “Mother Water,” is a spirit revered in West, Central, and Southern Africa, as well as within the African diaspora. She is often depicted as half woman, half aquatic creature, with a snake coiling around her undressed midsection. Pearls, gold, combs, mirrors and other trinkets dangle off her body.”

The Knockdown Center, Maspeth’s art and events venue located in a century-old factory building, has unveiled its two newest additions, an event bar and the Ready Room bar and dining area.

The event bar will focus on serving visitors of their various art shows and events that take place throughout the year, while the Ready Room will have a small bar and dining area where visitors who may not want to take part in the events going on can relax and have a good time.

At its best, punk rock relies on an admixture of velocity, attitude and volume — which is exactly what made last night’s Deaf Club event a smash success. The show, held at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens, a former door factory turned interdisciplinary arts space, was curated by the Los Angeles-based artist Alison O’Daniel who, herself, is hard of hearing. The event was a live extension of O’Daniel’s “The Tuba Thieves” (currently a part of her “Room Tone” exhibition) — a film that explores the events surrounding an unlikely series of tuba thefts in Los Angeles schools.

A sharp winter sun filtered into the Knockdown Center, a former factory turned art space in Maspeth, Queens, on a recent afternoon as Skylar Astin and Morgan Hernandez enacted the bridal shop mock-wedding scene from “West Side Story.”

“Make of our hands one hand,” the young actors sang as they stood on the narrow stage. In “West Side Story,” with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, “One Hand, One Heart” is a hymnlike duet of arresting tenderness, an expression of a hope that will ultimately be dashed by racial tension and cultural mistrust. But as Mr. Astin (“Pitch Perfect”) and Ms. Hernandez (a freshman at the Boston Conservatory) continued to hold hands, dozens of teenagers solemnly flooded the stage. As they joined in, singing “Make of our hearts one heart,” what had begun as a duet about a personal connection became a choral affirmation of collective healing.

From a cardboard box mosh pit to projects made using oil heaters, cotton balls, and ac-motors, Swiss artist Zimoun turns mundane materials into mind-bending installations which question our sensory perceptions. For the artist’s latest project [KE]³, a triad of works, we decided to take to the field (also known as Queens) to experience the energy of his largest site-specific installation in the US to date.

You might think you know what you’re doing this Halloween, but unless it involves a candy maze and an edible meat sculpture, you may want to head to our favorite century-old factory building in Maspeth, Queens, instead. Friday, the Knockdown Center is hosting the opening of “Maybe I’m Amazed,” an installation that, true to its name, will involve an actual maze made out of giant wooden planters loaded with Circus Peanut candies in lieu of soil. The maze (a tribute to Batty Langley, a Gothic landscape designer) is just the start of it. The real kicker is the séance involving a shape-shifting, globe-trotting tree trunk.