Exhibition
June 5 – July 24, 2022
By appointment
Al Held Foundation
Boiceville, NY
Andrew Lyght:
Linear Dimensions
River Valley Arts Collective is pleased to announce Linear Dimensions, an exhibition of new work by Andrew Lyght in which the vibrant colors and fluid lines that define his practice appear on intricately crafted wooden structures and works on paper. Blurring the distinction between two-dimensional and three-dimensional mediums, Lyght's constructions resituate personal memories, Guyanese petroglyphs, and city layouts within an abstract pictorial space. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Al Held Foundation in Boiceville, NY.
The works on paper begin with monochromatic washes of acrylic, mixed with one or more contrasting colors, shades, or tints. On top of the color-saturated surface, Lyght demarcates the corners of the composition and maps ratios between the paper’s corners and edges with thin pencil lines. He then draws schemata of white circles floating across or emerging from curving tubular shapes. Rendered in continuous, graceful motion, the final image is labyrinthine and organic, like an esoteric diagram or the magnification of a complex microorganism.
Similar shapes appear on wooden wall-hangings, which reconstruct rectilinear painting conventions into more dynamic relationships between frames and the images that they enframe. In these works, a primary image panel sits obliquely over a multicolored frame that is in turn bisected with strips of painted wooden boards and rods. Lyght’s careful delineations of the composition’s parameters extend across both components, creating a unified effect despite the radical contrast. These frame structures also allow the composition to shift according to the angle from which they are seen. Like the architecture and city vistas that inspire the artist, the pieces acquire new depths and abstract configurations as the viewer moves through space.
Motion, travel, and navigating new terrain are aspects of Lyght’s signature style as well as of his biography. As a prodigious young artist, Lyght practiced and studied art in Guyana before living in Canada from 1969 to 1977, where he acquired Canadian citizenship. He then became a naturalized U.S. citizen, living in Brooklyn and parts of Europe before settling in Kingston, NY in 2006. Mnemonic snapshots of these places surface in his art, albeit in abstract form devoid of direct reference or legibility. The result is a body of work with idiosyncratic modes of inhabiting space and depicting the artist’s internal topography.
Andrew Lyght (b. 1949, Georgetown, Guyana) has received awards from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation in 2010 and the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation in 2004. He was an Artist-in-Residence at MoMA P.S. 1 during 1978-1980. His work was included in the 2010 Global Africa Project at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Andrew Lyght had a retrospective in 2016 at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York, New Paltz. Other museum installations include Andrew Lyght: 3-D Paintings at the Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, Roslyn, New York in 1985 and Painting Structure at the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts in 1983. Lyght's work is included in prestigious collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, New York; the Jewish Museum, New York; the World Bank Art Program, Washington, D.C.; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts.
River Valley Arts Collective is a Hudson Valley-based, W.A.G.E. certified organization committed to fostering an inclusive creative community that is responsive and attuned to the ecology of our region. Through partnerships with neighboring arts organizations, foundations, studios, and farms, we curate exhibitions, commission new work, organize outdoor installations, give artists both material and monetary grants, coordinate residencies, host workshops, and spark discussions on a wide range of subjects. As a nexus for regional artists and artisans to connect and collaborate with each other as well as with the broader community, we create a generative space for experimentation and shared learning. Our efforts foster the production of work that is as aesthetically and conceptually groundbreaking as it is environmentally aware.
Since 2020, River Valley Arts Collective has been proud to partner with the Al Held Foundation on a series of exhibitions presented in Al Held’s former drawing studio as well as outdoor installations on the foundation's grounds.
The Al Held Foundation is charged with the stewardship of Al Held’s art and creative legacy. Based in Boiceville, NY at Held's former home and studio, the Foundation’s mission is to foster the appreciation and advancement of the principles of modern art and the public’s understanding of Held’s contribution to art of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the last decade the Foundation has facilitated the organization of exhibitions, lent works of art, promoted scholarly research, and conducted educational programs in the United States and abroad. The Foundation is represented by White Cube.
River Valley Arts Collective is grateful for generous support from: Mara Held, Daniel Belasco / The Al Held Foundation, ASD Fund of the Essex County Community Foundation, Athena Foundation, Cabbage Hill Farm Foundation, Nicole Cherubini and Patrick Purcell, Mark Dion, Kristen Dodge, Stef Halmos / Foreland, John B. Koegel, Esq., The New York Foundation for the Arts, The O’Grady Foundation, Robin Panovka, Clay Rockefeller, Rydingsvard Greengard Foundation, Richard Salomon Family Foundation, Hart Perry / Southwood Wood Products, Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, Helen Toomer / Stoneleaf Retreat, Luke Ives Pontifell / The Thornwillow Institute, and SJ Weiler Fund.
Andrew Lyght: Linear Dimensions is curated by Sophie Landres and Candice Madey. For more information, please contact info@RVACollective.org.
This exhibition is on view at the Al Held Foundation in Boiceville, NY. The Foundation is not open to the public, however guided private tours of the exhibition are available by appointment.
