ALTERONCE GUMBY: READING RAINBOWS

ALTERONCE GUMBY: READING RAINBOWS

It is impossible to know what future can be made out of an alabaster past so resounding, and an ebony past so maligned, but some key may be found in the palette which experiments with colors in order to discover shades, which mixes shades in order to arrive at color, or color, which, by the time one has arrived at it, and by means of this process, always bears an arbitrary and provisional name. Shades cannot be fixed; color is, eternally, at the mercy of the light.

James Baldwin, Just Above My Head (1978)

(September 24, 2017 – New York, NY) Long Gallery Harlem is pleased to present Reading Rainbows, the first solo presentation of work by painter Alteronce Gumby. Eleven paintings will be on view through October 29, 2017. 

The work in Reading Rainbows was created at the conclusion of Gumby’s year-long residency in Paris, France. Gumby’s time in France, not unlike the time of many African American artists before him, provides context and a new perspective from which to process the seemingly eternal American dilemma of color. 

Gumby’s tonal paintings challenge one’s quick gaze of the color spectrum and draw the viewer into an exploration of the brilliance, saturation, and subtly of changing hues. Textured, layered, gradient, and bold—the color spectrum of Gumby’s paintings defiantly reject the expected and assert a nuanced and refreshing understanding of color norms. Further, these works are consistent with Gumby’s personal practice of creating tetraptych compositions, an arrangement of four canvases displayed as a single work on which Gumby spreads paint with his fingers and creates his color gradations. 

Alteronce Gumby currently lives and works in New York. He received the Robert Reed Memorial Scholarship during his MFA at the Yale School of Art. He received the AAF/Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts as well as the Dumfries House Residency in 2015. In 2017, he was artist in residence and the Harriet Hale Woolley scholar at the Fondation des Etats-Unis in Paris, France.

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