Alteronce Gumby. Charles Ross

About

This new body of work by Alteronce Gumby was created in direct response to his recent visit to Charles Ross’ monumental earthwork, Star Axis (projected completion 2026) located near Ross’ off the grid studio in northeast New Mexico. In the summer of 2023, Gumby spent an evening alone in Star Tunnel, an element of the complex constructed in alignment with the Earth’s axis and the North Star Polaris. As one ascends the tunnel, the framing of Polaris shifts, revealing cosmic alignments of the past, present, and future. This experience directly inspired Gumby’s two-panel, mixed media painting Starry Night (2024). Among gradations of color and texture, spiral galaxy formations populate the work, reflecting light and shifting perspectives through glass layered and tinted with acrylic paint.

Often referencing site-specific experiences, Gumby’s paintings are embedded with natural elements such as metals and gemstones originating from mineral-rich areas, including quartz mined by the artist in Mount Ida, Arkansas and asteroid particles the artist recovered from Meteor Crater in Winslow, Arizona. Gumby sources materials to convey a cosmic perspective. Channeling the geological history of these minerals, his paintings contain energy, the metaphysical aspect of color and light.

In conversation with Gumby’s new paintings are four select vintage works by Charles Ross: Tapered Column (1992/2004), a work from his ‘prism series,’ and three works from his ‘solar burns series’ are featured in the exhibition. Building upon artworks exploring light and perception that Ross created as early as the 1960s, Tapered Column is an acrylic sculpture filled with optically formulated liquid. Like a telescope, the column acts as an optical device, transforming one’s perception of surrounding objects and space. 

The painting Fibonacci: 54 yellow, each the time it takes sunlight to reach the Earth, 8 minutes, 19 seconds (1987) is a series of solar burns on treated wood created using magnified sunlight. Ross’ solar burns are direct indexes of the relationship between the Earth and the sun. Next to Gumby’s glittering and immersive surfaces, they speak of past events and spent potentialities. Both immense and concentrated, these micro- and macro-gestures are meditations on human scale within a cosmic universe.