Jim Shrosbree’s artwork includes brightly colored wall sculptures that seem to start and extend out of the wall itself and seem be a created from the wall.

These pieces are some of many drawings and sculptures featured at “Zero/Distance,” an exhibition at the Des Moines Art Center’s downtown gallery through Dec. 31. For Shrosbree, the wall sculptures represent the barrier between the subconscious mind and the creativity that flows from it.

“The wall is the silent screen of the subconscious; the pieces that emerge are the activity that emerge from that silence,” Shrosbree says. “I, as an artist, am resolving the dynamism of the piece and the silence of the wall.”

The idea for the pieces came from a discussion Shrosbree had with a mathematician about zero distance, a term that, for Shrosbree, represents the point that lies between opposites. He says he’s been working for 15 years on works focusing on this relationship.

“It’s not right or left, but both at the same time,” Shrosbree says.

That idea fits well with Shrosbree’s work, which he says deals with creating harmony out of opposites, including creating a balance between distinct forms and abstract expression within many of his sculptures.

“I think that’s the challenge of artists, bringing these opposites into some kind of balance, and using whatever material to make it into harmony,” Shrosbree says.

Shrosbree, associate professor at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, has had work featured at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Revolution Studio in Detroit.

In college at Boise State, he says, he became addicted to drawing and expanded to three-dimensional art later on. He uses whatever medium properly expresses what he is trying to create.

Much of Shrosbree’s expression comes from meditation he does before he begins his work to clear his mind for what he wants create, he says.

“What comes before the work is more important than the work itself,” Shrosbree says.

Shrosbree says he has to keep in touch with the half of himself that stays the same throughout his life as well as the part that changes when working on his pieces.

“We have to be connecting to what we have inside and the half that is absorbing new things,” Shrosbree says.

Who: Jim Shrosbree “Zero/Distance”

Where: Des Moines Art Center Downtown, 800 Walnut St., Des Moines

When: Through Dec. 31

Cost: Free