Wendell Gladstone’s exhibition of new work, Mirages to Touch, opens at the Kravets Wehby Gallery on February 5, 2022. Wendell Gladstone weaves together a multitude of psychologically charged elements that crystallize under the nature of longing. Lithe, sylphlike bodies twist and contort themselves, sprawling across the surfaces in search of each other. As otherworldly as these figures are, they possess an all too human desire for connection; to touch, to embrace, to find comfort in their surroundings and one another. Bodies, nature, and architecture are forced together in a condensed dreamlike space, bending and blending to accommodate each other in a flirtatious choreography.

Gladstone’s surfaces are luminous under thick applications of acrylic paint cut with translucent details that resemble stained glass. Each element, whether formal or conceptual, probes at questions of public vs. private, flexibility vs. rigidity, connection vs. solitude.