Surveying the forever in progress “Wall of Light” series is an upcoming exhibition of Sean Scully’s work at the Mnuchin Gallery. The New York venue will host one of the artist’s most celebrated bodies of work, which began in 1984, from February 28, 2018.
The exhibition will present more than 20 paintings from the “Wall of Light” series, which Scully began in 1984 and has continued to develop up to today. This series spans decades and locales, capturing the full spectrum of Scully’s subjectivity through the metaphor of architecture. Scully credits a trip to Mexico in the early 1980s as the crucial moment of the series’ origin. Captivated by the Mayan ruins he visited, Scully put down several watercolors with a set spontaneously bought before the trip. His gestural brushstrokes are personal historical markers on the “Wall of Light” canvases. Each canvas has an internal rhythm, a call and response between the alternating bands of colors repeated in different areas of the painting. The large format allows for minute examination of the movements of the artist’s hand across the canvas, and the viewer becomes part of the painting’s creation in tracing these movements. For Scully, without light there is simply no emotion, no color, no painting.