William Turner Gallery celebrated Curtis Ripley’s most recent investigations into abstraction “Chromesthesia” on February 19, 2022. The exhibition can be viewed April 16, 2022.

Curtis Ripley, You Don’t Know Me, oil on canvas, 60” x 72”

How does one visually qualify the sound of color, or conversely, the color of sound? Chromesthesia is a neurological phenomenon experienced in the synthesis of binary sensorial modalities (synesthesia) where sound and color converge into a joint perception. In his painterly choreographies, Ripley interprets this ephemeral phenomena where light dances and shadows play in concert, whilst color is given musical agency. He often cites music as a departure point in his process, evidenced in the working titles. The canvases are gestural expressions of events conducted into orchestrations of lyrical harmony as the eye traverses through fields of color.

Activating the canvas’ surface through visceral gesticulations, he employs a vast repertoire of painterly techniques to amplify the dynamism of the viscous medium. In the tradition of the Old Master’s, veil’s of glazed oils are washed upon washes whilst opaque pigments dissolve into gauzy vapors, simultaneously revealing and obfuscating. One’s gaze is drawn in-and-out as a lens’ aperture renders depth-of-field. The transient nature of the corporeal world is described through lingering films of atmospheric haze interlacing with solid volumes rendered in highly saturated pigments; this tension is achieved through varied processes of application and deletion. Vibrations are deftly strung from his palette as colors rhapsodize in polychrome hums and variegated tremors. Expressionistic drips dapple indiscriminately here, automatic splatters chance to rupture spontaneously there… calligraphic strokes animatedly reach to articulate into attenuated arabesques. Rhythmically the paintings pulse into sublimely syncopated interventions of color, light, space and motion.

On view: February 19, 2022 – April 16, 2022

What: “Chromesthesia”
Where: William Turner Gallery, Bergamot 2525 Michigan Ave., SM
Website: http://williamturnergallery.com/