A 47-by-8 foot scroll spills across the gallery floor, covered in thin strips of cyan, sapphire and violet paper. At first glance, it resembles an expensive rug, but with a magnifying glass, the words “Call me Ishmael” materialize.

Similar to the other pieces in SPACE Gallery’s newest exhibition, “Doubt,” Diane Samuels’ full-hand transcription of “Moby-Dick” demands new eyes. In the realm of visual art, to look is not always to see.

Ms. Samuels’ work, along with selections from Lenka Clayton, Lori Hepner, Melinda McDaniel, Gina Occhiogrosso and Mary Temple, portray the multifaceted truths that can be buried in a piece of artwork.

Curator Nadine Wasserman believes the doors of perception are always open — instances of doubt are not a lapse in faith but a tool for re-evaluating commonly held positions, as opposed to blindly accepting them.

“I don’t want to dictate what doubt means,” said Ms. Wasserman. “I’m promoting questioning.”

Some of those questions are baseline queries about content, including one of Melinda McDaniel’s pieces — a series of 48 black panels with square cutouts in various patterns.

This is the exhibit’s inherent challenge — discovering that the panels translate to the number of months in four years, that each blank space corresponds to one unplanned day in the Trump presidency and that Ms. McDaniel herself feels double-edged doubt and open-mindedness for this unpredictable future.

Ms. Hepner’s process, a complicated digital method that she created herself, involves photography, LED bulbs and projection, so she finds that much curiosity focuses on the “how?” of her art, rather than the “why?”

The two light paintings she exhibits in “Doubt” are green and blue, created from Icelandic settings she photographed. Ms. Hepner said she wanted to visit before climate change continued to alter the landscape, although ironically she is manipulating the horizon lines and trees through her digital process.

“My camera is open 20 seconds, and you see the landscape floating in space in my studio,” Ms. Hepner said. The lights correspond to elements of the land, and she physically moves them to mimic the way she traversed through the landscape while taking photos. Once completed, her abstractions are hardly recognizable, concealing their complex nature.

Still, other works beg the viewer to reconsider their own unwavering convictions rather than their eyesight. Mary Temple’s “We’re All Pink on the Inside” takes up a full pale pink wall, complementing rosy sketches of female world leaders.

From her five-year daily drawing project, “Currency,” which depicts world leaders mentioned in web-based stories each day, Ms. Temple selected 19 portraits that illustrate women leaders.

“I don’t always love the drawings, but I may love what the person did that day,” said Ms. Temple, who places the images on the page higher up if she feels the person’s actions have contributed to global harmony, or lower on the page if not.

The selection includes Geraldine Ferraro, Queen Elizabeth II and Benazir Bhutto. Hillary Clinton was going to be the 20th image up until her unsuccessful presidential bid in November. Now, Ms. Temple leaves the placeholder open, wondering whether a female U.S. president will occupy it in the future.

Ms. Wasserman has grouped these pieces together to elicit questioning of not only beauty in the mundane, but what personal interpretations of artwork say about the viewer. In this process of give and take, a visitor may leave with even more doubt than before. To Ms. Wasserman, that’s a gateway to possibility.

Courtney Linder: clinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1707. Twitter: @LinderPG.

First Published: February 9, 2017, 5:00 a.m.