Tucked away from the downtown noise, SECRIST | BEACH offered a particularly private gallery space; the surrounding streets were silent, except for the hum of rain hitting the roof from above. This seclusion suited the emotional register of the concurrent shows that split the gallery in two: The Sun Standing Still by Luftwerk and Luminous Matter, the work of eight artists curated in collaboration with Luftwerk.
Luftwerk, the artistic duo of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, have built their practice on exploring the narratives imbued in color and light, grounding their installations in scientific inquiry. The Sun Standing Still offered new musings on these themes, with particular attention to two transient periods where atmosphere shifts and color meets light: dawn and dusk.
Stepping through the right side of the gallery, I was first met by Luftwerk’s wall installations, which extended across the room. White protruding forms of simple shapes appeared to radiate color from within, an effect that invited a closer examination. In one such installation, where the sky meets the earth: Horizon, thin, rectangular boxes appeared filled with the hues of dusk and dawn, from a rich lilac to a vibrant orange. As I peered directly into the artwork from a closer proximity, the illusion was revealed. One color painted on the base of each hollow box and another color painted on a slanted interior side produced a space suffused with reflected light. Through the ephemeral hues of dawn and dusk, the piece evoked the illusory essence of these transient periods.
Luftwerk’s Aurae series recalled the palette of Monet’s Impression, Sunrise. The same soft hues of the fading day cast themselves across white surfaces of concentric circles. Once again, I questioned my eye and ventured closer to the installation, finding that the glow derived from saturated colors painted on the underside of the rings.
Underlying the show was a sense of childlike wonder and curiosity, spurred by the pursuit of understanding the pieces. Each work pulled you in, no single viewpoint sufficient to gain full comprehension. That same sense of inquisitiveness carried into Luftwerk’s Color Space sculptures. These works were characterized by tinted glass sides overlapping across each cube and gradients shifting with every change in the angle they were observed from. Fleeting colors again echoed those which might be seen at dawn and dusk.
At the end of the space, partially hidden, Open Frame marked the culmination of the show’s colorful dynamism. The 26 paintings, each depicting converging lines with a single vanishing point, were directly inspired by the playfully assorted windows of Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame du Haut chapel. Dim purple light cast a mellow tone across the side room, while the colors used on the aluminum panels were shocking in their fluorescence. Ensnaring that same childlike desire to fully understand the piece, I found myself staring for minutes on end at the dancing hues.
To the left side of the open interior, Luminous Matter was the work of eight artists aimed at further exploring the intersections of color, light, and form in visual art, both reiterating and extending Luftwerk’s ideas. Kate Joyce, one of the featured artists, works with abstract geometries, using them to create a somber tone. Her photographs depict black and white intersecting shapes broken by shadows. She shares Luftwerk’s instinct to mislead the eye through her use of non-obvious subjects in her photographs, which reveal themselves upon closer examination to be glass and acrylic prisms.
Making color tactile in a more literal manner than Luftwerk, Andrew Bearnot’s handblown glass works were displayed standing upright. In glass blocks and planes, deeply concentrated ultramarine pigment made the form opaque in certain areas, while the absence of additive color allowed translucency in others. These color gradients, for all their simplicity, compelled me to reach out toward the works as if to touch them, guided by instinctive wonder.
SECRIST | BEACH was a perfect host for these two shows, which worked together in fluid dialogue. Across mediums and artistic styles, Luminous Matter and The Sun Standing Still demonstrated how the forces of visual art can demand that we linger a little longer to truly understand the works before us.
The Sun Standing Still and Luminous Matter were exhibited at SECRIST | BEACH from December 12, 2025–March 7, 2026.
