Stanford Art Gallery’s ‘EXTRA/PHENOMENALITIES’ exhibition reimagines and challenges perception 

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques. 

Walking into “EXTRA/PHENOMENALITIES” at the Stanford Art Gallery is disorienting in the best way possible. Running from Jan. 22 through March 13, the exhibition analyzes “where aspects of the world exceed or elude our usual modes of noticing, while still shaping how we see, feel, and understand,” according to the Department of Art & Art History. It begins with a cluster of video screens and multimedia pieces flickering in the entryway — a tableau that instantly draws viewers into an overwhelming world of layered messages and overlapping images. 

From there, the gallery opens into a bright stretch of maze-like blue and orange walls. During my visit, instead of moving through the space in a straight line, I followed my own winding path around corners. The space felt uniquely exploratory: Certain pieces were tucked into smaller compartments of the gallery. As I stumbled upon them one by one, it felt like each work was something I discovered myself. 

This design was intentional, as stated by one of the curators, Shane Denson, a film and media studies professor who worked alongside art practice lecturer Brett Amory ’20 and painter Karin Denson to bring together 20 artists and artist collectives across media, including painting, sculpture, video and computational installation. 

“EXTRA/PHENOMENALITIES” interrogates what Shane Denson called the shifting “conditions of appearance,” he told The Daily — the forces that determine what becomes visible or perceptible in the first place. 

The exhibition grew out of conversations between the curators about how philosophical ideas of perception — which Shane Denson dissects in courses like ARTHIST 253: Aesthetics and Phenomenology — might be translated into artistic practice. While completing his MFA in art practice, Amory was a student in this class. 

According to Shane Denson, the show was meant to be an installation piece in itself, as “It’s not always clear, I think, where one work ends and another begins,” he said. “We really wanted people to have to interrogate their first glance, so if they have an initial impression, we want it to be revised by the fact that when you turn around the corner, maybe there’s something confusing, like a mirror, that makes you question the construction of the space itself.”

That sense of confusion envelops viewers almost immediately. Cameras placed throughout the gallery feed live footage back to monitors near the entrance, subtly reminding us that the act of looking itself is being recorded. A video piece by Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin pairs birdsong with layered imagery, prompting viewers to think about ways humans, animals and artificial systems communicate. Moving further into the space, sculptural works like Daniel Brickman’s rope constructions evoke instruments while remaining ambiguous in their purpose. 

“Disorientation and reorientation are kinds of necessary first steps for grappling again with this bigger concept of the conditions of appearance,” Shane Denson said. “When you start disorienting and being disoriented, you start being able to ask questions about why [things] look the way that they look?”

The exhibition’s title points directly to this question: “The reason for the slash is because we’re thinking not just about what’s outside of appearance — the non-phenomenal, the extra-phenomenal — but how that is also impinging on what does appear,” Shane Denson said. 

According to Olivia Peterkin, Stanford Arts Office Programs Staff, the exhibition is “dedicated to showcasing the phenomena that — despite often going unnoticed — tend to shape how we see, feel and understand the world around us.”

Amory’s paintings touch on one such force: artificial intelligence. Initially, his works appear to be traditional paintings. However, the ideas for each composition were generated through a unique process involving bots scraping the internet for inspiration. These pieces blur the line between human and algorithmic authorship, subtly reinforcing the exhibition’s broader question of what — or who — shapes what we perceive.

However, the exhibition intentionally avoids presenting itself as a strictly tech or AI show. 

“For a long time, art has been seen as something that’s supposed to be useless, as opposed to technology, and I think that those borders between those concepts are shifting today,” Denson said. “Without being specifically about technology, we have people who are making things in non-technological media that are changing the borders between art and technology.” 

That tension between technology and creativity emerged as a strong throughline of the gallery, as video installations hummed quietly next to sculptures, and algorithmically-influenced images sat alongside paintings. 

Though I admit I only had a vague idea of what “phenomenality” actually meant before seeing this exhibition, “EXTRA/PHENOMENALITIES” never felt inaccessible. Part of the exhibition’s success lies in the way it works on multiple levels. With its colorful walls and mirrored surfaces, it is visually striking and inviting. Simultaneously, it evokes more thought-provoking questions about the invisible systems — whether technological, political or social — that shape what and how we perceive.

“EXTRA/PHENOMENALITIES” asks viewers to slow down, double back and reconsider what they thought they saw only a moment before.

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