INTRO
Light, in this exhibition, is not a fixed form but a condition in flux—constantly emerging, dissolving, and re-forming. Like the swell of the ocean, it gathers, lingers, and disperses, moving across time and space.
Swell of Light brings together three California-based artists— Shane Guffogg, Andy Moses, and Jimi Gleason—to explore how light shifts through nature, time, and perception. While each artist has developed their practice along a distinct trajectory, they are loosely connected through a shared sensibility shaped by California’s environment and the artistic lineage of the Light and Space Movement.
Across the exhibition, their works begin from subtle transformations found in the ocean, the sky, and the passage of time. Yet these are not representations of landscape, but investigations into how perception itself takes form. What matters here is not what is seen, but how it changes, how it lingers, and how it disappears.
Each artist approaches this inquiry through a different perceptual axis: duration, motion, and reflection.
Shane Guffogg’s paintings center on the persistence of light—on time as something that accumulates and remains. Color, in his work, functions not merely as a visual element but as a trace of layered duration. Built through successive strata, his surfaces hold the residue of light, suspended between presence and disappearance. Rather than capturing a fleeting moment, his work invites contemplation of how a moment extends, deepens, and endures. His paintings evoke a non-linear sense of time in which past and present coexist, allowing memory to surface and recede within the same visual field—an approach that resonates with the temporal sensibility found in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, where time is not sequential but continuously reconfigured.
Andy Moses approaches light through material and movement. Deeply informed by the dynamics of the ocean, his process involves the controlled flow and rotation of paint across the surface. As pigment moves, so too does light, shifting with the viewer’s position and dissolving any fixed image. His works embody a sense of fluid energy, translating natural motion into a visual experience in constant transformation.
Jimi Gleason explores reflection and surface as a means of spatial perception. Working with metallic materials, his paintings do not simply contain light, but actively engage their surroundings, incorporating the viewer’s movement into the work itself. His visual language—marked by banded structures across the surface—draws in part from photographic framing, particularly the immediacy of Polaroid imagery. Influenced by experiences ranging from surfing to aviation, his work expands the viewer’s awareness of horizon, atmosphere, and spatial depth.
Though working across different dimensions—time, material, and space—the three artists converge in their attention to a shared condition: the moment before form fully settles. It is a state in which experience gathers, perception sharpens, and meaning begins to emerge. This exhibition does not seek to capture that moment, but to remain within it—to trace the process through which it comes into being and dissolves again. It is within this shifting field that distinct rhythms and temporalities intersect.
These currents ultimately converge within a single place. Each artist, at different moments, has passed through New York, carrying away impressions that remain embedded within their work. These experiences do not appear directly, but linger subtly within the surfaces and structures of the paintings.
Swell of Light marks the return of these accumulated sensibilities to the city. At the intersection of California’s atmospheric conditions and New York’s lived experience, light, time, and memory are reconfigured—and felt anew.