Gallery Sonder is pleased to present The Thing In Itself , a group exhibition featuring works by Ruben Benjamin, Jae Ford, Noosha Golab, Gary Lang, Sheng Lor, Susan Maddux, Josh Sperling, and Pilar Wiley.
Thing In Itself brings together eight contemporary artists who reconsider how form, color, and material shape the way we understand the world around us. Inspired by Immanuel Kant’s assertion that we never encounter objects as they are—only as they appear through the lenses of our perception—the exhibition reflects on the subtle distance between what is seen and what is known.
“We can never know the thing in itself, we know only its appearance, shaped by the conditions of our perception.”
-Immanuel Kant
Each artist engages this idea through a distinct visual language. Their works invite viewers to consider how intuition, memory, physical sensation, and cultural experience transform the surface of an artwork into something more than an object. In these pieces, color becomes a mediator, form becomes a threshold, and material becomes a site where internal and external worlds meet.
Rather than offering fixed interpretations, the exhibition highlights the fluid space between perception and truth. What we encounter is not the “thing in itself,” but the constellation of emotions, associations, and reflections that shape our viewing. Through this collection of paintings, textiles, ceramics, and sculptural forms, The Thing In Itself asks us to slow down, look closely, and consider the quiet gap between what is present and what is perceived.
