The Hill Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition of new works by John Torreano titled Colors of Light & Space. Torreano is widely known for his colorful gems & paintings on flat or molded plywood panels.

Carved, painted, and embedded, John Torreano's sculpted paintings & columns roll from the wall with faced color and light. They announce an inner source of shaped energy that squeezes out into space from round gems cut deep into painted pine.

The raucous play of sparkle emanating from the columns is surrounded with layers of flat paint that hold the vertical shapes in place. The viewing engagement is at once physical & tactual as the columns appear to float from the wall in compositions that are both real & illusionary.

Torreano’s paintings are created on a human scale enveloping the viewer, drawing the gaze in, past the brush marks & routed shapes into the vast expanse of the works. The grain of the wood supplies a depth & spatial quality to the jewels, orbs, and paint that either float on top or inhabit gouged out holes. Some paintings are subtle & quiet where others are noisy & bold. They beg one to enter them & enjoy their vibrancy remembering the universe from whence they came. Torreano is a master of extracting joy, amazement, and emotion out of paint, plywood, and gems.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

John Torreano (b. 1941, Flint, Michigan) earned his BFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and his MFA from Ohio State University, where he studied perception as it relates to painting. Torreano has lived in New York City since 1968. He has worked in painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Torreano’s work has been exhibited internationally at museums and galleries, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council of the Arts. Torreano recently retired as Professor of Studio Art at New York University. He also taught at NYU Abu Dhabi as well as the school’s sites in Florence and Venice.

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