A gallery that is its own art movement

Two blocks apart, Serge Sorokko’s Napa galleries stand like bookends on First Street—twin spaces conceived by San Francisco architect Craig Steely. The first, which opened in July 2023, features floor-to-ceiling, circular, 12-foot-high pivoting dividers within a pristine exhibition storefront, its white epoxy floors punctuated by Steely’s black powder-coated steel furniture.

The newer, and larger, 4,000-square-foot gallery, unveiled last summer, introduces fixed quarter-circle, 14-foot-high walls that form discrete, hood-shaped enclosures for private viewing experiences. Raw wood ceilings and unfinished gray concrete floors create a deliberate counterpoint to the all-white bespoke space of its nearby predecessor.

“They are both conceptually the same, based on circles and quarter circles that bring dynamism and movement into the rooms,” Steely says. “I wanted continuity but did not want them to be exactly alike, like a chain store.”

The voids between Steely’s forms, what he describes as “something between architecture and furniture,” create meandering pathways along which viewers encounter modern, expressionistic works by artists such as Nathan Oliveira, Francesco Clemente, Donald Sultan, and the ever-popular Hunt Slonem. Sorokko.com