Alteronce Gumby, Look until you understand, 2022, Glass and gemstones on panel, 121.9 x 121.9 cm / 48 x 48 in
Alteronce Gumby is an abstract contemporary artist, working across different disciplines, expanding the pictorial language of his works and media. His work explores the visual and societal references of color and form and such as the opportunities within experimentation. Alteronce Gumby's paintings subvert traditional understandings of light and color through the nuanced application of glass and oil paint on panel. This unique crafting technique stems from the artist‘s concern of constantly redefining color and materialities’ meaning and connotations. Challenging the reception of the viewer, Gumby’s work pushes the boundaries of color and form through their intricate web of layers of darkness and light, reflection and interference, spatiality and its »auratic« experience, such as Art Theorist Walter Benjamin would define in »The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction«. Through Alteronce Gumby’s fluorescent and chromatic spectrum of iridescent color, the artist engages the viewer and expands the notions through which we perceive form and color, the subjectivity on identity, the materiality on earth and in cosmic space.
The apparent and striking materiality of the works gives reference to their process of creation and allows the viewer to see and re-feel the literal crafting behind each work. Referring to Stanley Whitney, Jack Whitten, Mark Rothko and Robert Rauschenberg as the painters’ influences, Alteronce Gumby’s artistic technique constitutes a jigsaw pattern of precise and hidden references, inserting raw materials such as fragments and pigments, glass, rocks and gem stones, while abandoning traditional forms and painting techniques.
“Experimentation within my practice keeps my creative mind going. The moment I stop experimenting, the moment I stop questioning things.”
– Alteronce Gumby
Alteronce Gumby (b. 1985 in Harrisburg, PA, US) graduated from Yale University's MFA program where he was awarded the Robert Reed Memorial Scholarship. The artist holds a BFA from Hunter College, New York, and completed a year-long residency as the Harriet Hale Woolley scholar at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris, France (2017). Alteronce Gumby was granted the AAF Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts as well as the Dumfries House Residency, Ayrshire, Scotland, UK, both in 2015. Gumby’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Parrash Heijnen, Los Angeles, US, False Flag and Charles Moffett gallery, New York, US, and at Fondation des États-Unis, Paris, FR. Alteronce Gumby participated in a group show at Hauser&Wirth Southampton, NY, US, and in Bode Projects’ Berlin artist-in-residence program in 2021. He was named The Artsy Vanguard of 2021, which annually recognizes some of the most promising working contemporary artists. Alteronce Gumby lives and works in NYC, New York, US.