I saw my reflection in a Nike vase; it was neither ancient nor did it bear any depiction of the Greek goddess, but it had a swoosh like on the side of the running shoes. The future relics of our contemporary society–did that ever enter our minds? How about comets of cataclysmic proportion, the birth of evolution, a reimagined Renaissance, our own hearts?

Sean Kelly is delighted to present It Never Entered My Mind, a group exhibition featuring fifteen artists working in painting and sculpture, curated by Los Angeles-based collector and producer Michael Sherman. Titled after Miles Davis’ rendition of the iconic tune, It Never Entered My Mind, each artist in the exhibition, much like each instrument in a jazz ensemble, takes up the perennial concerns of art making in their own manner, producing a show like a visual dithyramb–with a legion of sounds uniting in one composition.

As I ventured deeper into the gallery, deeper into the amalgamation of personal and cultural history, I witnessed an untroubled meditator, a beheaded man, a faceless reminiscer and wondered, what never entered their minds? And what, if anything, is there to catch those thoughts that never enter, or in some cases, never exit our minds? It was in Grant Czuj’s Left_OVERS: LO018 that I found a clue. Wires tattered and frayed over colorful canvas, sprawled out like a net of capture for those floating remnants of the psyche, hardly tangible. In the deep sea of all that we can remember, thoughts can get tangled like fish in a net, sometimes salvageable, usually gasping for air, always wanting to break free.

For some this sea is more like a sacred veil. Behind it vague symbols and fragmented messages dance in the mystery of all that is barely perceptible. Observe Thiang Uk’s Red, with a hand-print on one side and a door on the other, everything in-between is up to interpretation. In this indecipherable space, we may consider that perhaps some of the things that have never entered our minds, were just not allowed.

A painting from Alexander Harrison, positioned in an absurdly miniature frame, felt like a distant memory, still peaceful and undisturbed​​, retaining all of its original beauty and cementing its special place in the mind. It would seem that each of our heads has a spot like this, a sanctuary of thought, a territory of the mind left preserved with a sign out front that says nothing else can enter this part.

Every once in a while, all we can do is break the glass window that separates us from this place so that we may peer in and allow all that was on the other side to enter once more. With its spherical canvases, beasts and muddled creatures, ideas deconstructed and painted over again, this exhibition stands as a testament to the world in our heads. Perhaps there are things that never enter our minds but they find access somewhere else, taking a blank canvas and imparting the sort of beauty on it that comes when everything else is clear.

It Never Entered My Mind, is on view now through July 27 at Sean Kelly Gallery in Los Angeles.