We invite you to attend our first-ever online film screening, presenting a 40-minute trailer of highlights of the documentary Color in the company of its maker, contemporary artist Alteronce Gumby. For our event Alteronce will give a live introduction before the screening and will also participate in a Q&A with attendees at the conclusion, hosted by visual artist, professor and CSA member Laura Berman. Please join Alteronce on his personal exploration of the world of colour, to discover what it means to him and how it has influenced his creative expression.
"Color takes viewers around the world starting with captivating discussions and demonstrations with pigment expert Michael Ambron and celebrity stylist Jerome Lamaar in the Bronx, NY and then to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana, to celebrate the vibrancy of French Creole, Caribbean, African, African American, and global cultures. The documentary then travels internationally, experiencing the vibrant colors of the Holi Festival in India, the red sands of the Sahara Desert, the crimson-hued city of Marrakech, Morocco, and to the Great Barrier Reef featuring conversations with marine ecologist Dr. Catherine Kim. The adventure concludes in Alaska with the Northern Lights in Fairbanks, featuring conversations with documentarian Shondiin Mayo".
@alteroncegumby
Alteronce Gumby. Photo courtesy of Alteronce Gumby Studio
Alteronce Gumby is a New York artist whose practice includes painting, ceramics, installation, performance, and film. He is represented by Nicola Vassell in New York and parrasch heijnen in Los Angeles, and he has exhibited widely in the USA and internationally, including solo shows in Tokyo, Mexico City, Berlin and Paris. Gumby graduated from Yale University’s MFA program in 2016, where he was awarded the Robert Reed Memorial Scholarship and the Austrian American Foundation/ Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts. He has also participated in numerous international artist residencies such as the Rauschenberg Residency (2019), London Summer Intensive (2016), Summer Academy in Salzburg, Austria (2015), 6Base (2016), and as the 2016 recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship at the Fondation des Étas-Unis in Paris.
"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".
Bode Gallery, Berlin
The Sky is Not the Limit, 2021. Gemstones, painted glass, and acrylic on panel, 47.5”x60"
In Black and White We See Color, 2023. Glass, gemstones, and acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 in.
Games That the Light Plays (detail), 2024. Bismuth, citrine, glass, and acrylic on panel, 72x72 in.
For more of Alteronce's work please see his website and the websites of Nicola Vassell in New York and parrasch heijnen in Los Angeles.
Laura Crehuet Berman is a Spanish-American visual artist and professor. She teaches printmaking, book arts and color theory at Kansas City Art Institute (Kansas City, Missouri, USA), where she has been a Professor since 2002. In 2024, Berman worked at The Centre for Creative and Cultural Research at University of Canberra (ACT, Australia), where she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar as part of the Fulbright Australia exchange program. Berman is currently writing a book on color and contemporary printmaking.
We gratefully thank Laura Berman, Jean Pretorius, and Nick Harness for suggesting and organizing this event with Alteronce.
Registration
Successful registrants will be notified by reply email and will be sent the Zoom link and instructions shortly before the event. To receive this email with the Zoom link, you must register by the deadline of midnight AEST on Friday April 11th, but please note that this event may be booked out in advance of that date. If you're unable to attend live, please do not register.
We ask our members and friends to please pass on news of this event to their contacts by sharing our Facebook/ Instagram/ LinkedIn posts or the following link: https://coloursociety.org.au/event-6120186
