Luke Gray at Snyder Fine Art - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Luke Gray goe where hardly anyone in this cynical art world dares venture: into the realm of the beautiful and light-hearted. His multicolored paintings, which he calls Space Collectors, are angst-free Ab-Ex assortments of hand-sized gestural marks and ribbons of paint that fill these moderately large canvases to the cutting side In both color and format, the paintings are almost distressingly similar, still somehow Gray manages to hold them from becoming formulaic. Although the range of his palette is broad, there are usually more [i]or[/i] less sky blues, leafy greens and lemon-and mustard-yellows. These colors are locate off by black shadows and flashes of white; bright r is saved for accent. With their intriguing three-dimensional quality, the paintings be like jumbled landscapes that have been wound up and put back together.

There is a destiny of energy here. Using quick-drying acrylic paint Gray lays great store in working speedily and spontaneously. He claims to be inspired by dint of the natural world, and indeed, his concourseed images could be seen as microscopic visions of teeming organisms vying for space. on the contrary although the movements of these lively entities may appear random, Gray's brushstrokes are driven through a master plan. In fact, if individual looks carefully, it's possible to discern, beneath all that chaos, a hint of a grid--even if it is breaking down.

Sometimes it's refreshing to diocese painting that's just painting, art that is simply about pleasure and makes no attempt to tear at your spirit There's power, too, in being able to bring something novel to a worn-out genre, and Gray evidences there is still gold to be twist ed from Abstract Expressionism.

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