EXTRA/PHENOMENALITIES

"Nearest Neighbor" showing as part of the EXTRA/PHENOMENALITIES show at Stanford University

January 22–March 13, 2026
Stanford Art Gallery

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, January 22, 5-7pm

What are the limits of experience? This exhibition explores forms of appearance that press against the edges of perception—phenomena that are felt only indirectly, sensed as traces, intensities, or disturbances rather than as stable objects. “Extra/phenomenality” refers to this ambiguous zone of surplus and slippage: where aspects of the world exceed or elude our usual modes of noticing, while still shaping how we see, feel, and understand.

Such excess takes many forms. It can be found in natural processes whose scales outrun human attention; in cultural and spiritual traditions that treat appearance as layered or illusory; in psychological or bodily states that strain the coherence of conscious experience. It also takes shape in today’s technical environments—where images, signals, and decisions circulate through systems that operate faster than we can perceive. New modes of appearance are at stake, but also new zones of non-appearance—gaps, blind spots, and operations that remain perceptually inaccessible. In all of these cases, the limits of experience are stretched and reconfigured.

The artists gathered here engage this terrain of extension and attenuation. Some work with subtle shifts of color, rhythm, or material to draw attention to thresholds where perception begins to blur. Others stage encounters with forms that flicker between visibility and invisibility, inviting viewers to sense what hovers at experience’s margins. Still others explore how contemporary computational systems generate patterns that enter our lives without ever presenting themselves directly.

Taken together, the works invite reflection on how the phenomenal world is never given all at once, but is continually inflected by forces that lie just beyond phenomenality itself. EXTRA/PHENOMENALITIES asks viewers to slow down, to look again, and to inhabit the unstable relation between what appears and what exceeds appearing—an aesthetic space where the subtle, the oblique, and the barely perceptible can take on new significance.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Morehshin Allahyari, Mark Amerika, Will Luers, Chad Mossholder, Brett Amory, Daniel Brickman, Paul DeMarinis, Karin + Shane Denson, Ebti, Frank Floyd, Douglas Goodwin and Rebecca Gordon, Gabriel Harrison, DJ Meisner, Joshua Moreno, Carlo Nasisse, Miguel Novelo, Andy Rappaport, William Tremblay, Camille Utterback, and Kristen Wong

CURATED BY:
Brett Amory, Karin Denson, and Shane Denson

VISITOR INFORMATION:
Stanford Art Gallery is located at 419 Lasuen Mall, off Palm Drive. The gallery is open Monday–Friday, 12–5pm, and will be closed Presidents' Day (Monday, Feb. 16). Visitor parking is available in designated areas and payment is managed through ParkMobile (free after 4pm, except by the Oval). Alternatively, take the Caltrain to Palo Alto Transit Center and hop on the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle. This exhibition is open to Stanford affiliates and the general public. Admission is free.