Enter the extraordinary worlds of Randy Gaul. In Inner Workings at 111 Minna Gallery, unfamiliar creatures, intricate landscapes, and sculptural forms reveal an imagination shaped by filmmaking, craftsmanship, and a lifelong curiosity about what lies beneath the surface.
This exhibition shares its opening night with Passion Projects SF: The Artist Behind the Effect, where six artists from film and visual effects reveal the art they create beyond the screen.
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The artist behind Inner Workings
Meet Randy Gaul
From cinematic worlds to works of his own.
Randy Gaul has contributed artwork to more than 100 films. His career spans Industrial Light & Magic and visual development for The Polar Express, Monster House, War of the Worlds and Beowulf, helping filmmakers imagine creatures, characters and the worlds they inhabit.
At 111 Minna Gallery, Inner Workings brings you closer to the imagination behind that career. Elaborate drawings, strange landscapes and sculptural objects reveal an artist drawn to hidden systems, unexpected materials and stories that begin with a closer look.
Read Randy’s full bio
A closer look
Look beneath the surface.
Gaul describes the exhibition’s title piece as a meditation on what the naked eye cannot see. Eyes, membranes and passages of light invite you into an anatomy that could just as easily be a landscape.
Before an imaginary world reaches the screen, someone has to envision its inhabitants, its landscapes, and the details that make it believable. Randy Gaul’s career has taken him into that creative process, including years at Industrial Light & Magic and work on films such as A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Despicable Me, and Rio. Inner Workings brings that imagination into a more personal setting, inviting visitors to encounter the worlds he creates for himself.
Across mixed media works, archival prints, and sculpture, Gaul blurs the boundaries between anatomy, machinery, and the natural world. Branching structures suggest both roots and nerves. Strange figures carry recognizable personalities. Vast imagined landscapes offer places to wander, while small studies reward a closer look.
These worlds also hold ideas drawn from life beyond the studio. Corporate absurdity, belief, fear, memory, and humanity’s origins find their way into the work, sometimes through humor and sometimes through unsettling beauty. Several pieces connect to Gaul’s developing film project Realms. Others begin closer to home, with familiar places, salvaged materials, or the character of a particular person.
Gaul’s experience as a maker gives these imagined forms a physical presence. His background in woodworking and fabrication informs an attention to structure, texture, and how things fit together. Even his most unfamiliar creations can feel as though they might breathe, move, or inhabit a world just beyond our own.
At 111 Minna Gallery, Inner Workings offers an opportunity to spend time with the personal vision of an artist whose professional life has helped bring cinematic worlds to life. Follow a detail, linger with a character, and discover where his imagination takes you.
Passion Projects SF: The Artist Behind the Effect opens concurrently and is also on display at 111 Minna Gallery, offering another perspective on the personal work of artists connected to film and visual effects.