“The Shape of Thought”

Continuing through August 20, 2026

What is the shape of thought? In this exhibition of six artists, co-curators Alexandra Bowes and Catherine Wagner pose this question, followed by, “And what are the stimuli that shape [our thoughts]?” Both questions are newly relevant in today’s attention-shattering, AI-everywhere world. Each of these artists interrogates and engages with her surroundings and humanizes time. We see six singular minds at work.

Sandra Ono uses unexpected materials like towels and crushed Diet Coke cans, some of which appear in unexpected places. We must crane our necks to view the cans tucked between layers of stiffened satin in the wall-mounted soft sculpture “Untitled (2701)” (2026). “Untitled (2306)” (2023) is activated by its placement on the narrow side of a wall. This delicate work comprises small scallop shells from the home of the artist’s late grandmother, along with white ribbons and shell-like forms crafted from resin. Some display tiny Hello Kitty stickers or washes of blue. Threaded on a silver wire, all dangle, vertebrae-like, below a crystal charm. Like much of Ono’s work, “Untitled (2306)” conjures the artist processing deeply private memories.

By contrast, Jay DeFeo’s gestural works on paper feel like immediate responses to objects from her everyday life, among them a tripod and bones. In fact, she began by photographing the objects to assess their compositional possibilities, taking stock of spatial and tonal relationships. “Untitled” (1974), from her “Bone Series,” intermixes whiplashed charcoal lines, dry-brushed strokes, and darker shapes to represent the knobby complex that is a ball and socket joint and explore how it functions. The joint’s resemblance to a crucifix and the way it braces the rectangular sheet of paper identify these putatively lowly bones as harbingers of the fate awaiting us all. 

Veronica Ryan’s art abounds in seeds, pods and pits. Born on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, Ryan immigrated to Britain as a child. Her family took with them the practice of rethinking and remaking almost anything to serve a useful purpose. Himalayan salt, Portuguese pink marble, fossilized coral and hairnets all show up in Ryan’s assemblages. Playing on our assumptions about attention-worthiness, meaning and power, she mingles the organic with the mass-produced, the artful with the trashy. The tree trunk–like forms of “Plaster Bandage” (early 2000s) — one studded with pins and wounded, one striated with staples — cling to each other as if embracing. Gauze binds them together. Bandages are in fact a frequent motif. In “The Inheritance” (mid-2000s–2024), British-style adhesives swathe a halved giant seed pod. The smaller “Lateral Shoots” (2023–24) sits against it, expanding the metaphor and suggesting that, for Ryan, works of art are necessarily contingent. 

Ryan is the only artist among this group who hasn’t lived or worked in the Bay Area. The region as such is the subject in five laser prints from Tressa Pack’s series titled “Wanderers in a Sea of Fog.” Its title alludes to “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” by 19th century German Romantic Caspar David Friedrich, invoking the metaphysical relationship between humanity and nature. Pack’s photographs each render one or two tiny, distant walkers nearly blurred out by the fog on an ocean beach. They wear puffer jackets and hoodies. Some have dogs. There are footprints and tire tracks, but little else except the blanket of whiteness. Time and space merge. The effect is as much Alberto Giacometti’s existential “Walking Man” as it is Friedrich’s rambler.

Deborah Lohrke and Nicole Phungrasamee Fein take contrasting approaches to geometric form. Lohrke builds the colored ink drawings in her “Journey” series using hand-rendered triangles. For the artist they represent stability, harmony, and interdependence and thus function as both form and content. She adds a back pattern of circles and dots. The images captivate with pulsating rhythms, intoxicating color and shimmering light. Each has a numeric date, reflecting the artist’s interest in numerology. Hers is a meditative, even mystical, practice, a journey. 

In Fein’s work, squares become visual fields. To create a piece such as “20.03.12.01” (2020), she applies iron oxide pigment to an illustration board, then tips the board and mists it with water. The rivulets form a meshwork that becomes ever more delicate as the droplets descend. Ceding much of her control to the flowing water, Fein allows fluid to draw itself. “Wild Child 9” (2025) is composed of a grid of nine artist’s proofs. Their radial imagery results from dropping pigment into a pool of water, then applying white gold leaf to what remains after it dries. Thus the markings are transmuted into radiant celestial events. As you move around them, they shimmer and sheen, sometimes winking out, other times glowing.

As we view the exhibition in its entirety another question arises: why devote time and attention to art at a time when a corrupt administration is abusing our judicial system, militarizing our streets, and attempting to steal our elections? At a time when artificial intelligence is colonizing our thinking and threatening a dystopian future? 

A recent essay by English writer Zadie Smith offers a considered response. She acknowledges that a single work of art can alter a person’s life, but that occurs only rarely. More realistically, engaging with art requires imagination, mental effort, and a willingness to enter a world created by a stranger. American capitalist culture assumes that convenience is among society’s highest aspirations, Smith argues. Yet human relationships, including those shaped by works of art, are often inconvenient. Still, relationships are why we exist on this earth. It’s also why “The Shape of Thought” matters.