Parrasch Heijnen Gallery is pleased to present Alteronce Gumby / Al Loving: Catching the Holy Ghost, an exhibition of new works by New York-based artist Alteronce Gumby (b.1985, Harrisburg, PA) in direct conversation with historic paper collage material from 1976 to 1993 by the late Abstract Expressionist painter Al Loving (b. 1935, Detroit, MI, d. 2005, New York, NY). Alteronce Gumby paints dynamic works subverting traditional understanding of light and color through nuanced application of pigment applied to his surfaces directly with his palms and fingers. The artist’s intensely textured works balance shadow with light and form with material. Using non-objective expression, Gumby’s ethereal objects are abstractions of emotions given tangible form where colors vanish and reappear. The lustrous tetraptych paintings are filled with subtle distinctions in color with each added shade mirroring unique moments that become part of one’s intricate identity. Diagonals appear in all of Gumby’s works, embodying a sense of forward velocity and fluidity of time. Particularly in the mosaic works, the viewer’s reflection becomes fragmented in the tesserae, a mix of broken stained glass, mirror, and iridescent glass. There is no fixed identity, the world and those in it are in a constant state of flux. The striated plane directly opposed to a matte monochromatic field sets up a twofold narrative of refraction and absorption. Al Loving’s paper collages of the late 1970s through the 1990s, are less about deconstruction of abstraction than they are about curiosity of what the hand can do to become one with the picture. While Loving began with an innovative approach to hard-edge geometric abstraction, his work evolved into collage formats arriving at explosions of rich, fibrous understanding of shape, color, and placement. The exhibition’s title, as described by Gumby, refers to transcendence from the physical, to the idea of the spiritual. Painting becomes the artists’ undeniable language of awareness, as an act of transcendence, offering a form of liberation and tranquility through color. Chromatic gradients operate with powerful significance in both artists’ methods where reactive media unrestrainedly engage in their socio-political surroundings.