Alteronce Gumby

“Colors are the deeds and sufferings of light.”

—Goethe

Nicola Vassell Gallery is pleased to present The Color of Everything, a solo exhibition of new abstract paintings and sculpture by Alteronce Gumby. It is the culmination of eight years of experiments and theories, which progressed as the artist investigated the history of monochromatic painting, color theory, cosmology, astrophysics, interstellar photography and Impressionism.

Gumby’s process is the fulcrum of his work. It begins with the examination of light, its properties, and media, including resin, glass and gemstones. The result is what Gumby calls his, “tonal paintings”, made of unorthodox materials, which produce different hues, values and energies. His awareness of these ocular and kinetic possibilities derives from intensive research and observation. Gumby’s paintings are constituted to expand the understanding of abstraction, life and the origins of the universe.

Reflection is a property of light, but it is also a method of examining one’s environment and self. Illusion is relative to reflection and reflecting light, while illusion is ostensibly linked to faith. These prospects factor equally into Gumby’s painterly outcomes. Slick, reflective, resin surfaces act as both scientific and spiritual advisors. Shards of glass, meticulously pieced together like a puzzle, refract light. Each painting, composed of countless tiny prisms, slow and bend light as it travels from the density of air to glass. The light disperses into color and creates astonishing optical phenomena. Gemstones populating his works are evidence that heat, pressure, hot fluids and gases once consolidated in the earth’s core. The visual opulence created by these elements are not only a testament to the ways in which color manifests, but the visible and invisible forces at work in our world and beyond.

Alteronce Gumby was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and resides in New York City. He received his BFA from Hunter College in 2013 and his MFA in Painting & Printmaking form Yale School of Art in 2016. He was a resident artist at the Rauschenberg Foundation in Captive Island, Florida, in 2019. In 2017, he completed a residency as the Harriet Hale Woolley scholar at the Foundation des Etats-Unis in Paris. Solo exhibitions of his work include Cross Colours, Bode Projects, Berlin, 2021; Somewhere Under the Rainbow/The Sky is Blue and What Am I, at Charles Moffett Gallery, New York and False Flag, New York, 2021; Alteronce Gumby: My Favorite Color is a Rainbow, Parrasch Heijnen Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020; When the Nightmare Comes – I Believe, Long Gallery, New York, 2019; Black(ness) is Beautiful, the Foundation des Etats-Unis, Paris, 2017 and Reading Rainbows, Long Gallery, New York, 2017. Alteronce’s work is held in the collections of the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, among others.

Photo credit: Luis Corzo