ON VIEW soon

SETH HOWE | Architecture
of Awareness

Tyte Gallery is pleased to present Architecture of Awareness, a solo exhibition by New York-based artist and architect Seth Howe, curated by Sharon Bates. Bringing together sculpture, works on paper, and video, the exhibition centers on a unique body of work that Howe describes as instruments for seeing, objects expressly designed to encourage viewers to become more aware of the act of perception itself.

Drawing deeply from architecture, phenomenology, and metaphysical inquiry, Howe approaches seeing not as passive observation, but as an active process through which meaning is constructed. Rather than functioning as mere representations of the world, his geometric constructions from the Stack Series operate as advanced seeing devices. Through carefully calibrated relationships of form, color, scale, and space, these works encourage a heightened awareness of how vision actively structures
our experience.

What distinguishes Howe's work from other contemporary geometric abstractions is that his forms are never an end within themselves. Instead, the geometry works entirely in service of perception. As the title Architecture of Awareness suggests, the exhibition asserts that consciousness itself is being structured
or built, in much the same way that architecture structures physical experience. Expanding on the nature of this deliberate intent, essayist Michael Wilson observes: “At first look, Howe’s work can seem austere, even cold, in its precisely tooled materiality and graphic precision. Yet it is this outward formal control that allows the viewer to consider the work’s varied contexts with clarity.”

Alongside the sculptures, the exhibition features several series of works on paper that distill these same conceptual concerns, successfully extending the physical language of Howe's sculptures into two dimensions. Expanding the exploration of awareness even further is a recent video work, Hexagon Origins, that animates the negative spaces generated by the sculptures. By digitally activating these voids, the video reveals latent dimensions within the physical forms that would otherwise remain unseen.

About the Curator:

Sharon Bates is a visual artist, independent curator, and founding director of the Albany International Airport Art & Culture Program, which has become a national model for public art.
In 2025, she established Millbrook Arts Project, a collaborative initiative between Millbrook Arts Group and Millbrook Library dedicated to providing exhibition opportunities for contemporary artists and enriching public engagement with visual art. Bates’ multidisciplinary work has been exhibited throughout the Northeast, Los Angeles, and Miami.