“Wally Gilbert: Transformations”
Sept 30 – October 18, 2014
2 receptions Saturday, October 4, 4-6 & Thursday, October 9, 6-8
Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present the exhibition “Wally Gilbert: Transformations”. The show opens September 30th and continues through October 18, 2014. In celebration, 2 receptions will occur with the artist present at both: Saturday, October 4, 4-6PM & Thursday, October 9, 6-8PM.
Transformation has always been an importantelement in the Digital Art of Wally Gilbert. Artist and scientist, Gilbert approaches his art with scientific gusto, artistic freedom and the wisdom of experimentation. Working now with color, light and shapes rather than DNA, for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1980, the work in his latest exhibition begins with photographs of a skylight that he has transformed beyond reality. With color, light and overlapping shapes, Gilbert pushes and transforms the image by taking color to the extreme and creating complex abstractions that leave the viewer to imagine their origins.
Gilbert has been working with digital photography for the past ten years, sometimes exploring color, sometimes focusing on black & white imagery as he did in his last solo show at Viridian. In this exhibit, his focus is on color and light which he investigates and manipulates, transforming fragmentary photographs into a plethora of artistic and arresting abstract artworks.
A world renowned scientist, Gilbert explores the medium of photography zealously, searching for the beauty in reality and then translating that beauty into his own language of color and form. In the past he has captured a wide variety of subjects from dancers to abandoned factories to architecture, translating the subject into artistic images that he enhances digitally, pushing and overlapping colors and shapes creatively and scientifically.
Wally Gilbert’s latest work investigates the transformations of three fragments of an image through color saturation and layering in PhotoShop, pushing and pulling the embedded color until he has created his own new world. All created in 2014, these images, printed on aluminum, glow with color driven to full saturation creating new and strange interactions, until they have become “abstract meditations”.
Gilbert pushes colors to their extreme. Three works – “Yellow Torment”, “Blue Torment” & “Red Torment” perhaps express the sometimes psychological pain of the artistic process as well as how color can so thoroughly transform what we see. All use the same image solarized, with the primary color and black angular architectural structures coming forward yet revealing tiny aspects of other colors peeking through the structures, as if trying to escape. He transforms the hues of light as well as the color of forms.
We hope that you will be able to meet this outstanding artist and share his vision through seeing these incredibly fascinating artworks.