Swell of Light: Three Painters, One Frequency

by Celestina C. Billington, Programs Coordinator, Gallery Chang

On a crisp evening in Midtown, Gallery Chang opened Swell of Light, a three-person exhibition bringing together California painters Andy Moses, Shane Guffogg, and Jimi Gleason. Champagne was poured, dubai chocolate and ube cookies from GoGo Jang disappeared quickly, and about forty people cycled through rooms quietly commanded by paintings that didn't ask to be understood so much as felt.

The three artists have been friends for decades. But the deeper story, the one I got to pull on during the artist talk, runs through mentorships, movements, and the particular weight of coming of age as painters in 1980s New York and Los Angeles.

That decade was the high tide of Conceptual Art in the United States. To choose painting then was to plant a flag in contested ground. Shane Guffogg had Ed Ruscha as his mentor, one of the great pioneers of Pop Art, a man who never stopped finding language in image. Jimi Gleason had Ed Moses, a central figure of Postwar art. That Ed Moses and Ed Ruscha were great friends highlights the relational lineage between these male artists, and there's a particular resonance in seeing Jimi stand in this exhibition alongside Andy Moses (Ed's son). Two artists shaped, in very different ways, by the same Southern California icon. 

Jimi and Shane's early working relationship took off through PHARMAKA, the nonprofit Shane founded in 2004 that became, for a time, a gathering point for painters committed to the idea that their medium still had things to say. PHARMAKA's founding manifesto argued that painting — in the era of the conceptual, the political, the spectacular — had earned a rare freedom: it no longer needed to justify itself against anything. It could simply be about the act of looking, the moment of transmission between a painter's hand and a stranger's eye. As the manifesto penned by Shane himself puts it: "painting can persuade the viewer to enter into a world created through the crucible of the artist's vision (...) and great painting commands not just attention, but presence. It is when this lifetime of learning is harnessed, creating a moment or idea with pigment on canvas, that the viewer can be persuaded to slow down…and compelled to look." 

the ART SPEAKS FOR ITSELF  (quality pic with title and artist credit - suggest “Geodesy” by Andy Moses)

All three artists in Swell of Light have taken that sentiment seriously. How they convey it differs radically, both in process and in how they talk about their work. During the artist talk with Jimi and Shane, they spoke about the differences in their early training: Shane experienced the intensive environment of CalArts, whereas Jimi vacillated between courses at Berkeley and surfing at the beach. This difference is evident even today in how they carry themselves; Shane has an elegant austerity and Jimi a charming playfulness. Together, they enraptured the audience, going back and forth on artist maturation and the development of intuition. At the end of the talk, we opened the floor to audience questions, and a young woman painter asked, “How do you know when the painting is finished?” Both artists responded, speaking at length of music as their compass for knowing when a work is complete.

IMAGE FROM ARTIST TALK

The differences between the works are what catch you first. Shane's paintings pulse. The strokes feel like they're coming toward you, like the surface is exhaling. There's a pressure in them, an almost physical insistence on presence. Jimi's work, on the other hand, with its reflective surfaces, does the opposite: it pulls. You find yourself leaning in, drawn into something that seems to deepen as you approach, and when you look closely, you can see flickers of your own reflection. The word that kept returning to me as I captured my own eye in the silver nitrate surface was invitation: these are paintings you inhabit. Andy Moses, who couldn't be with us at the opening, does work that I feel does neither. His canvases are sealed in their own atmosphere; beautiful, complete, untouchable in the best sense. Not cold, but fully self-contained. They are psychedelic landscapes that belong to themselves.

Between the three of them, Moses, Guffogg, and Gleason map something close to the full range of what light can do in a painting. Moses sends you through it. Guffogg is pressurized by it. Gleason catches it mid-flight. One painter as portal, one as pulse, one as mirror.

Swell of Light runs now through June 16, 2026, at Gallery Chang NY.