Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction

The Bridgehampton Museum is proud to announce the opening of Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction, a thought-provoking new exhibition featuring the work of Brian Gaman, Curtis Mitchell, and Michael McKeown. The exhibition opens Friday, September 26^th with a public reception from 5 to 7pm, inviting audiences to engage with a collection of sculptures and installations that challenge traditional portraiture and explore the human head as both a metaphor and a form.

Taking inspiration from Francis Picabia’s famous quote, the exhibition examines how the head – and by extension, the self – has been rendered across time and culture. Rather than adhering to the regal, elevating traditions of portraiture, the works on view are blurry, bulbous, anonymous, plebeian, personal, and at times even unsettling. Together, they offer a meditation on identity, perception, and the cosmos.

Brian Gaman’s iron and steel “globes” nod to post-minimalism, balancing literal weight and serial form while evoking the spinning globe motif. Curtis Mitchell’s pieces investigate the synthesis between human and manufactured objects, emphasizing the individual’s reaction to society over representation. Michael McKeown’s work reflects a world worn down, asking viewers to consider their own agency in the face of cultural and commercial forces.

“There is a sense of both curiosity and despair in these sculptures.” Said curator Bonnie Rychlak. “A wealth of knowledge, alongside an awareness that we can only ever know so much. In an encounter with the other, we often glimpse ourselves – who do you see? The past, present, or the future?”