Guerra de la Paz’s “Nine” is on view through Sunday at ArtCenter/South Florida.

Selecting a metaphor of dislocations and missed connections, Jump Cuts — which refers to a film technique of rapid movement from one scene to another without narrative logic — is a convenient title for an assembly of diverse works created by Venezuelan artists who don’t necessarily share common territory. Jump Cuts is, however, a compilation of first-rate works in the collection of Venezuela’s largest bank, Mercantil. Four categories were crafted by the curators as a guide to understanding this sprawling art production: 1) The Modern Vernacular: Idealization of Modernity, 2) From the Object to the Mode of Representation: Synchronization of Local and International Modern Development, 3) Art Thought: Leveling Social Development and Artistic Development, and 4) Necrophilia: Ideals of Social Transformation. It’s kind of awe-inspiring, from the vantage point of the individual artist, to think that his or her tinkering in the studio might one day be rationalized with such grandiose language, more suited to an economic study commissioned by the World Bank. The text panels explaining the political and economic relevance of the individual works don’t add much to the appreciation of them. They are just trying too hard, and are distracting. It is possible to enjoy the works in Jump Cuts on their own merits, forgetting their contributions (or not) to Venezuela’s rise to modernization.

Video plays a big role in contemporary art, and Venezuela is no exception. Sandra Vivas’ short works, which up-end feminine stereotypes with solo performances, manage to avoid monotonous narcissism and feminist finger-wagging with humor in works like “Eu sou uma puta culta” (“I am an intellectual whore”). In his video “El leon de Caracas,” Javier Tellez stages a mock processional in which helmeted, armed policemen convey a stuffed lion through the ghettos of the capital city, conflating the sanctimony of religion with the brute power of the state. “Cinema Atlantis” by Alexander Gerdel passes a roving eye over a squalid building that formerly housed a cinema run by his family. The tangle of laundry lines, television antennae, bicycle wheels, makeshift cooking apparatus, undershirted children and torn curtains showcase the fraying infrastructure of shantytown existence on the outskirts of Caracas. Magdalena Fernandez unsettles the sublimity of the geometric grid via fluid motion in her video “1dmSL003.”

Aziz + Cucher, known for digitally manipulated photography, show images of ambiguous, futuristic, electronic accessories that vaguely resemble items one might purchase at Walgreens for personal hygiene, but they appear embalmed, inutile or even obsolete, as the title suggests: “Discontinued … Now!” They are juxtaposed with Emilia Azcarate’s intimate sculptures made by hand of organic materials, which suggest petrified droppings or food, and primitive tools. In his digital images, Alexander Apostol renders stylish modernist buildings in Caracas mute and inert, converting them to useless monuments by sealing off all points of access through windows and doors. This embalming of modern architecture evokes associations of stalled progress, death and suffocation.

Painters are represented as well, and many buttress the visual elements of their works with subtexts, some more extraneous than others. Carla Arocha’s “Nausea” is a juicier op-art painting than those of American artist Bridget Riley. Arocha based her work on the 1995 episode of gas deployed in the Japanese subway system, which rendered victims night-blind and nauseated. Arturo Herrera’s fantastic graphite drawing “The Night Before Last 6R” is based on collages made from cartoon coloring books. On the formal level, this drawing enlarges outlines, so they become solids, not only contours containing other shapes. These outlines seep into one another, like blood hemorrhaging beyond capillaries and veins, drenching organs and spilling out of the skin itself. A fist protrudes out of the network of lines in protest or aggression, and this abstraction becomes alive with sexual energy. Meyer Vaisman’s “Ciao” is a burlesque of decorative art, which contrasts a wildly patterned surface with spiritually empty expression.

Overall, CIFO succeeds yet again in upholding its mission to present cliché-defying exhibitions, and to fill the enormous gaps in the knowledge base of North Americans and Europeans concerning actual Latin American art production, past and present.

Jump Cuts is on view through July 15, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, at CIFO, 1018 N. Miami Ave., Miami; 305-455-3380; www.cifo.org.

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A more compact group exhibition is No Need to Touch, on view at ArtCenter/South Florida through June 24. Organized by Renee Cagnina, this show benefits from a sufficiently flexible curatorial conception that focuses on the properties of fiber. Cagnina appeared open to suggestion from enough artists hailing from different parts of the galaxy to keep it interesting. With “Carpet Study #1,” Kerry Phillips provides a concentrated wallop, layering pieces of carpet to fashion a mound that appears to have erupted from the gallery floor. Jillian Mayer’s artfully homely collages capitalize on sentimentality, and Natasha Duwin’s embroidered abstractions have a sort of lazy formalism. Both young artists have sufficient space and time ahead of them to produce more vibrant work. The high point of the exhibition is incontestably “Nine,” by artist team Guerra de la Paz. Semi-hidden under a giant Afro/nuclear mushroom cloud of exuberantly patterned items of clothing are the legs of nine mannequins, each sporting distinctive ’70s-era footwear — to marvelous effect. The tableaux created by these two artists are always inventive. The structural ingenuity of their works, which exhaust the possibility of discarded clothing as a sculptural medium, is matched by their work’s tremendous capacity for outrageous storytelling. Cagnina, the new director of exhibitions and artist services at ArtCenter, is to be congratulated on a sensitive arrangement of work from just-graduated MFA students with mature artists on more solid footing.

No Need to Touch is on view through Sunday, June 24 at Art Center/South Florida, 924 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach; 305-674-8278; www.artcentersf.org.

Michelle Weinberg is an artist and writer based in Miami Beach and New York. Find her online at www.michelleweinberg.com.