If only it were as easy to recycle plastic bags as it is to transmute them into art. Abstraction comes (almost) readymade in the new work of Washington photographer Dean Kessman, who merely wads up his bags and shoots them. (Have a Nice Day is pictured.) This absurdly simple process yields images of remarkable crispness and depth, as well as intense suggestiveness. With transparent textures surrounding colorful cores, some of these digital photos resemble jellyfish or internal organs, or perhaps the wrapping for one of the latter; that bag whose center is bloody red could have been used for transporting a purloined kidney, or the human heart that the hero of Dirty Pretty Things found stuffed into a London hotel toilet. A closer look reveals that at least some of the vivid red is distorted lettering, and the title of the piece deflates fantasies of gory aftermaths: It’s called “Target,” and the other titles also reveal their origins, from “Borders” to “Paper Source”—whose multicolored design, when crumpled, creates a sort of plaid that Vivienne Westwood might have used for a skirt back in the C-30 C-60 C-90 Go days. Maybe those sanguinary first impressions weren’t so wrong, though. Kessman also offers some photograms—made by putting objects directly on photo paper—that riff on the supposed conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The most striking of them, Untitled 2 (Wafers & Wine/Body & Blood), is transubstantiation as depicted by medical imaging. The show is on view from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, to Tuesday, Jan. 31, at Conner Contemporary Art, 1730 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 588-8750. (Mark Jenkins)