Loose Thoughts

Featuring Umberto Ciceri & James Verbicky

Laura Rathe Fine Art Houston presents Loose Thoughts, marking the gallery debut of Umberto Ciceri, a leading figure in contemporary kinetic and perceptual art, alongside artist James Verbicky, whose resin works summon a lifetime of memory with a single word. Opening Thursday, November 19th, from 6-8pm at the River Oaks District gallery (4444 Westheimer Rd, Suite D135), the exhibition brings together two distinct approaches to the way seeing, remembering, and understanding happen all at once.

Ciceri and Verbicky each build works in layers that surface over time, the way a thought takes shape. Arriving on their own, thoughts shift as we examine them and never quite settle. Perception works the same way. We tend to think of seeing and understanding as separate steps, but what we notice is shaped by what we remember and expect. What we make of it then changes what we notice next, a continuous exchange rather than a sequence. Their work lets us watch that exchange happen.

Ciceri’s interest in kinetic vision fueled his exploration of immersive mixed-media art. Investigating how vision functions both physically and psychologically, he begins by filming moving forms or figures out of focus. This blurred footage captures the essence of the form, or the persona, and creates a visual rhythm as he extracts color from the video frames. He calls this process Hypertrait, a lenticular technique in which his images dissolve into color and blur, then shift and resolve only as viewers move past them. The result makes perception visible as an active, ever-changing process, much like the way thoughts form.

Verbicky explores a different kind of movement. His circular compositions hold each word in a single moment while suggesting it will return, so the movement in his work builds on repetition that happens in the mind. Gathering found materials and words clipped from vintage advertising, he weaves them together like a stream of consciousness beneath resin. Layered colors, textures, and images guide the eye across each piece, the way we move through the transient moments of life, experiencing them in motion like flashbacks.

Ciceri stacks moments of time that surface as viewers move, and Verbicky layers personal memory over shared culture, held in resin. Both propose that seeing is never simply passive. Loose Thoughts treats consciousness as something layered, never a single thought but many at once, and invites viewers to experience perception as something continuously in motion.