In Santa Monica William Turner Gallery (at Bergamot Station) debuts a new exhibition titled Vapor Wave by Jimi Gleason. The gallery held an opening art party on April 5, 2025, but not to worry, as there is still time to catch the solo show through May 31, 2025.
Vapor Wave Jimi Gleason
The exhibition is Jimi Gleason’s most ambitious body of work to date. The artist utilizes a rich vocabulary of materials and styles. Gleason has built up gossamer thin layers of iridescent paint to create a series of paintings that are engagingly enigmatic. They confirm an artist at the height of his talent, confidently exploring the power of nuance and understated expression.
The Artwork
In this new series, vaporous ribbons of color play across lustrous surfaces that morph and shift as one engages them. The effect elicits a sense of unexpected revelry – much like the kind one might experience gazing across a lake in a predawn moment, captivated by the growing light as it caresses and undulates across the water’s surface.
And like water, Gleason’s surfaces are quietly in motion. Their iridescent paints subtly shifting in hue as light plays across them. In some of the canvases, sharp diagonals bifurcate the compositions, providing dramatic structural rifts to these ethereal surfaces. The effect is a hypnotic and prismatic visual structure. light, color and also form intersect in ever-changing play. Gleason has a uniquely personal connection to water: he grew up surfing, and took up rowing in college. When he talks about his work he also talks about, “the way the light looks underwater,” and early mornings rowing when the calm water reflects the sky at dawn.
VAPOR WAVE, 2024, SILVER DEPOSIT & ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 53” X 48”
Like many artists working in the Light and Space arena, materials and their catalytic visual effects are essential to their work. In Gleason’s case, he employs silver nitrate and pearlescent paints to activate his surfaces. They catch and reflect surrounding light, further engaging one’s sense of the surrounding space. Gleason is a leader in that next generation of Southern California artists to work in the Light and Space ethos. Therefore he carries the dialogue forward and using his work of art to explore the phenomenological properties of perception.
History
Born in Newport Beach, CA, Gleason received his BA from UC Berkeley in 1985. He studied printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute before relocating to New York City, where he worked as a photo assistant and technician. Returning to California, Gleason was employed in the studio of Ed Moses for five years. Combining the disparate technical and compositional skills developed during his exposure to printmaking, photography and mixed media painting, Gleason is now the subject of considerable curatorial and critical attention.
Gleason’s work is exhibited in significant public institutions, including the Hammer Museum, the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, the Long Beach Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Tucson Museum of Art.The artist’s paintings are actively collected by a growing number of major public and private collections around the world.
On view: April 5 – May 31, 2025
What: Opening Reception,
Where: William Turner Gallery, 2525 Michigan Avenue E-1, Santa Monica, CA 90404
When: Running through May 31, 2025
Website: http://williamturnergallery.com
For additional art exhibitions, and performances as well as culinary events, see LAArtParty’s Upcoming Events Page.
Read more about Arts and Entertainment throughout the world on our sister site EatTravelGo.com, an art inspired travel site.
Or enjoy artist / gallerist interviews on our Art Talk Page also on ETG.
