SquareCylinder Relaunch - Anand Sheth in conversation with Terri Cohn

Reflections, both literal and metaphorical, have long served as sites of inquiry within the history of representation. In Closer Than They Appear, Bay Area artists and designers work with mirrored and reflective materials not only as optical devices but also philosophical provocations—tools for examining how we come to recognize ourselves in images, or fail to.

The exhibition’s title, Closer Than They Appear, underscores both the laws of physics and metaphorically how reflections might inform us about proximity—of intimacy made strange, enacting a kind of call-and-response with the viewer’s self-imaging. This exhibition draws upon the spatial and psychological dimensions of the mirror, what Lacan famously termed the méconnaissance of the mirror stage, to explore how reflection can mislead, multiply, or undo perception altogether. In this context, reflection becomes sculptural, spatial, and social—shaped by the histories embedded in our physicality and the politics of perception.

Through multimedia works, sculpture, paintings and installations, the artists - Elizabeth Barelli, Fyrn Studio, Studio Hecha, Sierra Kanistanaux, Kaarhaus, Medium Small, Cecilia Mignon, Studio Mondragón, Anna Monet Studio, AG Nwosu Ceramics, Alex Olwal, Ellen Posch, soft-geometry, Andy Vogt, Yaaqee Studio x Saint - engage with the reflective surface as an active site, where the gaze can loop, inform, reframe and deflect. The mirror becomes less a surface and more a contingent space where vision and narratives merge, reflecting and rebounding at times in curious rhythms. From polished geometries to fragmented surfaces, the works on view refract, redirect, and propose alternate ways of seeing. They recalibrate light and space as material entities, engineering a circuit that can only be completed by the viewer’s gaze. The mirrored encounters suggest that perception is never stable, that recognition is often partial, and that the self is assembled through acts of misalignment as much as coherence. Is this not, after all, the condition of modern subjectivity—fractured, recursive, and mediated through experiences that both produce and obscure recognition?

This exhibition is co-presented by re.riddle and architect Anand Sheth during San Francisco Design Week. Closer Than They Appear aligns with this year’s theme, Reform, asking how aesthetic experiences can initiate deeper confrontations — with the self, with structures of power, and with the cultural images that shape them.