Artist’s Reception: Charles Gurd: Aspects of The Primitive; Moons, Monoliths and Reflected Moonbeams

Charles Gurd paints space. His work focuses on space, color, and the intensity of light.

Somewhere between the chaos of fragmentation and order of homogeneity, the work seeks a sense of universal balance. The inquiry is not dissimilar to the fractal allusions present in abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings and the abstract qualities of paint application in the work of the impressionists. The work attempts to envelop the viewer, inviting concordance between their inherent sense of a unified field and the viewer’s natural inclination to seek patterns.

The expression of an artist should be one of unity. Physicists recognize that everything in nature is unified, and a work of art is only successful when expressing that truth. On one level, nature can be read as total randomness, but on another level as total unity. Brush marks on a canvas result in unity and help viewers become more unified within themselves as a result of viewing the art.

But, the work does address complexity which distinguishes randomness from nothingness. There is a structure in the works that emerges from individual elements that spontaneously form everywhere. The whole becomes much more than the sum of its parts. Naturally self-organized individual things interact and give rise to complex patterns.

The exhibition runs from October 10 through November 10, 2024.