Luminous Matter
Cover Image: Kate Joyce, Untitled #16 (one equilateral, one wedge), 2024
Luminous Matter
December 12, 2025 - February 28, 2026
Co-curated by Luftwerk
Andrew Bearnot
Larry Bell
James Collins
Shingo Francis
Kate Joyce
Jan Tichy
Ruth Root
Kim Uchiyama
Salon installation by Yuge Zhou
Introduction by Britton Bertran
Introduction
by Britton Bertran
Luminous Matter
“Colours are the deeds and sufferings of light.” - Goethe
SECRIST | BEACH is pleased to present the salon invitational exhibition Luminous Matter. Luminous Matter brings together a group of eight artists that formally and conceptually explore the interconnectedness of color, light, and form The exhibition was curated with the assistance of gallery artists’ Luftwerk (Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero) Luminous Matter is presented concurrently with Luftwerk’s debut solo exhibition at SECRIST | BEACH, The Sun Standing Still.
Luminous Matter is an exhibition that examines the interdependent and generative relationship between three elemental constituents of visual experience: color, light, and form. Each, in isolation, holds an autonomous aesthetic and conceptual presence; yet, in their convergence, they produce the perceptual and emotional conditions through which we apprehend the world. This exhibition proposes that the meeting point of these three tropes their overlaps, tensions, and dissolutions can offer a renewed lens through which to consider the nature of perception itself.
While color, light, and form have historically served as fundamental building blocks of visual art, they also occupy complex theoretical terrain Goethe’s assertion that “colours are the deeds and sufferings of light” provides an entry point into this dialogue: color emerges not merely as a surface attribute, but as an event a manifestation of interaction, time, and transformation. Light, meanwhile, becomes both a material and a metaphor, shaping visibility and revealing the interstitial boundaries between presence and absence Form, often regarded as static or structural, is here treated as fluid and responsive, contingent upon the oscillations of both light and color.
In this exhibition, these three forces are explored not as fixed categories but as active agents of experience They are seen as participants in an ongoing exchange between the physical and the psychological, the empirical and the affective The works assembled for Luminous Matter engage with this exchange through a range of media from painting and installation to light-based and spatial practices each probing how visual phenomena can evoke states of emotion, cognition, and embodied perception In an era saturated by digital imagery and artificial illumination, this exhibition returns to the primal forces of color, light, and form not as mere formal devices, but as conduits of human experience, capable of evoking wonder, reflection, and the quiet rediscovery of seeing itself.
Jan Tichy
Across mediums, Jan Tichy creates environments where he manipulates the degrees to which things can be seen, and how they are seen, questioning the concept of visibility both physical and social For Tichy’s socially and politically engaged work, light reveals or conceals, invoking the notion of fidelity in representation.
In Tichy’s installation American Nature (after Nauman), three shapes made of neon tubing are connected to police scanners, each connected to three different areas of Chicagoland Dispatcher and police activity over the set radio frequencies prompt the neon to light up When illuminated, “here” and “there” are yoked together, a tether to the civic experience.
American Nature (after Nauman), 2017
White neon tubing, customized software, radio scanner
Three pieces; 72 x 72 x 3 inches (square), 72 (diameter) x 3 inches (circle), 71 x 83 x 3 inches (triange) Edition of 3
Shingo Francis
In Shingo Francis’ work, a confluence of light and color create boundaries, at times shapes, and at others shifts in perception Within abstract forms, gradating color and elusive separations point to the Californian vistas that influence the artist.
Francis creates geometric compositions that depend on the viewer’s perceptual engagement to fully emerge Through a specialized process, he develops light-refracting paint using finely ground mica As the viewer moves back and forth, and up and down, the paintings’ iridescence evokes the temporality of the changing sky This optical activation places the viewer at the center, making perception itself the enabling force of the work.
Some Evenings Are Bright, 2023 Oil on canvas
36 x 36 inches
Future is Bright, 2023
Oil on canvas
64 x 64 inches
James Collins
For James Collins, the maxim “ process is content” stands as a critical focus of his abstraction Using the makeup of oil and acrylic particularly their dissonance in Collins’ work, the material operates almost independently of the artist’s choice, and the resulting forms are uncannily familiar to the viewer. Color and tone are able to achieve a mimicry of landforms, root systems, and canyons through abstract canvases.
Within the conjured forms of these two paintings, energy flows in organic waves across the canvas What at first seem to be impasses later reveal themselves to be much more nuanced: while some diagonal sweeps divert the later movement, others are rendered inoperative At this contradiction, only material holds the truth.
Untitled, 2025 Oil and acrylic on linen
60 x 48 inches
Untitled, 2025 Oil and acrylic on linen
60 x 48 inches
Larry Bell
Beginning with painting, Larry Bell’s practice has evolved into an investigation of light’s refraction and projection on surfaces, using panes of glass, mirrors, and thin films Bell experimented early with industrial materials and processes, eventually developing a technique to deposit thin films atop glass that provoke unexpected encounters with light, seeming to capture and absorb it.
In SMSW, a microscopically thin vapor-deposited film of metallic oxides is laid onto material through a vacuum-coating process, then cut, lifted, and re-layered by hand to disrupt the grid The vapor drawings express, perhaps more curiously than Bell’s glass sculptures, an exploration of surface, where technology and the artist’s hand are entwined as as the creating entity.
SMSW, 1992
Vapor drawing on canvas
30 x 30 inches
2 25 x 13 25 x 13 25 inches
0 5 x 7 25 x 5 75 inches
Twilight Vortex, 2025 Glass
Cyan Tablet, 2025 Glass
Cyan Sequence Glass
0 75 x 5 5 x 5 25 inches
Cyan Core, 2025 Glass
19.25 x 3.25 x 3.25 inches
Cyan Helicoid II, 2022 Glass
14 x 4 x 4 inches
Cyan Unduloid, 2025
Glass
22 25 x 4 x 4 inches
Twilight Cylinder I, 2025 Glass
17 x 2 75 x 2 75 inches
Twilight Cylinder II, 2025 Glass
14 75 x 2 75 x 2 75 inches
0 5 x 26 5 x 8 25 inches
Sky Slab, 2018
Glass
Cyan Helicoid I, 2022
Glass
18.5 x 3 x 3 inches
47 x 40 x 40 inches
Uncertain Model, 2019
Polycarbonate
Kate Joyce
With an attentiveness to the geometry of light and space, Kate Joyce captures liminal states of intrigue, suspension, and clarity through photography, text, and installations With a background in photojournalism, Joyce’s mediums, particularly photography, provoke a relationality between viewer and subject, the latter exploring the passage of time, movement, and migration
Joyce photographs glass and acrylic prisms in her Space Craft series, with light misleading, illuminating, and disguising the true form. Used in telescopes, for one, these geometric objects focus the act of looking to see more precisely than the human eye When operated in the series’ context, however, the form is, in fact, studied itself Where they also bear resemblance to architecture, Space Craft ruminates on perception as we move through the built world
40 x 26 5 inches
41 x 27 5 x 2 inches, framed
Edition 1 of 3
Untitled #2 (two equilateral), 2024
Archival pigment print
26 5 x 40 inches
27 5 x 41 x 2 inches, framed Edition 1 of 3
Untitled #11 (one isosceles, one wedge), 2024
Archival pigment print
Untitled #16 (one equilateral, one wedge), 2024
Archival pigment print
40 x 26 5 inches
41 x 27 5 x 2 inches, framed Edition 1 of 3
26 5 x 40 inches
27 5 x 41 x 2 inches, framed Edition 2 of 3
Untitled #9 (one wedge, one isosceles), 2024
Archival pigment print
#12 (one equilateral), 2024
40 x 26 5 inches
41 x 27 5 x 2 inches, framed
Edition 1 of 3
Untitled
Archival pigment print
26 5 x 40 inches
27 5 x 41 x 2 inches, framed Edition 2 of 3
Untitled #1 (two equilateral, one cube), 2024
Archival pigment print
40 x 26 5 inches
41 x 27 5 x 2 inches, framed Edition 1 of 3
Untitled #20 (one isosceles, one wedge), 2024
Archival pigment print
Kim Uchiyama
Kim Uchiyama’s forms are influenced by ancient architecture. For Uchiyama, color is a source of light, and variability in hue develops an atmosphere among a decidedly flat canvas A principal concern of the artist is an equitable surface, where no element is held with higher regard than another
In the three paintings for Luminous Matter, while the columnar forms adopt a direct, objective style, wavering not one bit against the eye ’ s gaze, the negative space holds subtle differences in color. In the visible brushstrokes, the neutrality found in the blocks of color is disproven, and associations, illusions, and possibilities seep through It is in this balance that Uchiyama affords her paintings an internal dialogue
Arcade, 2023 Oil on linen 66 x 72 inches
Equinox, 2023 Oil on linen
66 x 72 inches
Portico 4, 2023 Oil on linen 66 x 72 inches
Ruth Root
Ruth Root fuses hard-edge abstraction with cultural relevance. Irregular canvases exploring color, line, and form couple with custom printed fabrics of found imagery Pulled from media, news, and search engines, the motifs are oriented into patterns evocative of pixillation in the digital age
Untitled starts a dialogue between semiotic patterns and abstract expressionist movements, in the middle of which is a question towards shape, outline, and dimension. As a grounding element for the themes at play in Luminou M R ’ h d i i i l d i i i k
Untitled, 2025
Digitally printed fabric
Acrylic and spray paint on Sintra Board 53 x 33 inches
当⽇之东遇⻅夜之西 when the East of the day meets the West of the night
Salon Installation by Yuge Zhou
Yuge Zhou is an experimental video artist and filmmaker Her work explores themes of migration, difference, and displacement, and the visual composition of them further reinforce these modalities Exploring places that change in relation to human behavior, nationality, and political difference, she imbues these ordinary spaces with a consequence of lived realities.
when the East of the day meets the West of the night places two recordings of the setting and rising of the sun from opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean, seemingly reflecting one another Zhou was raised in China but traveled to the US to study The work explores her dual identity developed during the separation from her family, particularly under Covid travel bans when she was unable to return to China. The piece balances presence and absence, drawing both into a liminal and beautifully fragile harmony of the ‘ now. ’
当⽇之东遇⻅夜之西 / when the East of the day meets the West of the night , 2020 14 minutes and 6 seconds, with sound
Sound design: Kikù Hibino; Cello solo: Ping Huo; Videography: Dylan Jordee & Xiong Lei Edition of 5 with 2 APs
would like to
We
thank artists Andrew Bearnot, Larry Bell, James Collins, Shingo Francis, Kate Joyce, Ruth Root, Jan Tichy, and Kim Uchiyama, and Peter Blum Gallery and William Turner Gallery for their participation in this exhibition
