A fascinating exhibition of absurdist sculpture has opened at the new Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in San Rafael. Featuring works by Reniel Del Rosario and Marin’s Richard Shaw — with painter Martha Shaw — “Cluttered Heads” runs through March 30 at 1210 Fifth Ave., in the big red-brick building shared at one end with Umpqua Bank.

The exhibit and featured artists deserve some backstory. Last year, MarinMOCA left its longtime home in the converted Hamilton Air Force Base headquarters building in Novato, a space with two large sunny galleries, a gift shop, an open entryway that also served as a gallery and several studios occupied by resident artists. The site was ideal for large exhibits but suffered from lack of awareness by Marin residents. With no drive-by visibility, it’s not the sort of place that would attract accidental visitors, despite the fact that Beso Bistro, the restaurant next door, does a brisk business.

The Novato space hosted many wonderful solo and group exhibits in its upper and lower galleries, including some juried shows, such as the now-discontinued altered book show. The San Rafael location offers better access at the cost of diminished display space.

Benefiting from its proximity to the Falkirk Cultural Center, Art Works Downtown, Rileystreet Art Supply, the Smith Rafael Film Center and, a few blocks away, the Museum of International Propaganda, the new museum has the potential to draw in larger audiences. It also offers the advantages of a nearby parking garage, some free parking behind the building and many restaurants within walking distance.

MarinMOCA’s new home is basically a commercial office in need of renovation, but co-curators Jodi Roberts, the museum’s executive director, and Natasha Boas have bravely plowed ahead with an exhibit that’s a sort of passing-the-torch story about one legendary Bay Area artist and a young acolyte that he influenced at some distance before they finally met in person.

Shaw, a retired University of California at Berkeley art professor, was and is a prolific ceramicist known for humanoid figures and baffling objects — for example, a wall in one room at MarinMOCA is festooned with what look like scraps of notebook paper covered in doodles, but, on closer examination, prove to be solid bits of fired clay masquerading as paper.

It’s not clear if Shaw was a pioneer of this technique, but it’s one that’s been exploited by many artists since the days of the funk and folk art trends — as opposed to the “outsider art” fad of 20-some years ago, when the art world discovered untutored artists such as Mose Tolliver and Howard Finster.

Shaw works his magic with objects that appear to be other than what they are, such as a heavy — and unusable — solid ceramic “tea pot,” very much in keeping with the induced confusion inherent in much conceptual art. It’s all about pushing the limits of viewers’ perceptions and assumptions. Shaw’s figurative sculptures allude to humans without any real physiological references — torsos made from vases or old violins, soup cans as heads, broomsticks or pipes as legs.

In an informative multi-page interview supplied with the exhibit, Shaw mentions having attended art school in San Francisco in the early 1960s and being influenced by artists such as Elmer Bischoff, Nathan Oliveira, Richard Diebenkorn and Manuel Neri. He also mentions having been mentored by Ron Nagle, who taught at the University of California at Berkeley and had a minor career as a composer and performer of quirky ultra-ironic pop songs.

Shaw also taught at the university for many years. That’s how Del Rosario fell under his spell.

From Vallejo, Del Rosario intended to go into engineering or architecture, but fell in love with art when he took an elective class outside his major. Shaw had retired from the faculty three years earlier but his influence was everywhere — especially in the studio and the art department’s library. A chance at taking ceramics was so profound that Del Rosario changed his major, earning a bachelor of arts in art practice in 2019.

Brightly painted, and intentionally disproportionate, Del Rosario’s artworks have a clear lineage to Shaw’s without being imitative. Most of them are comically unusable, such as a sink full of dirty dishes or an incredibly messy picnic. Not one has any practical use, the only real rule in contemporary art. Of course, you might remove a Jeff Koons vacuum cleaner from its vitrine to suck up some dust, but that would be crudely missing the point. Crafty as it may appear, “Cluttered Heads” is a riotous exercise in three-dimensional comedic absurdity. In short, pure art.

Contact Barry Willis at barry.m.willis@gmail.com.