Last week on The Bare Square we talked about artists who use light as a medium to create their work. The next exhibition at  Little John Contemporary affords viewers the opportunity to personally interact with art made with light.

Artist Peter Bynum creates his work with acrylic on tempered glass with L.E.D. lights in a steel bracket.

No. 763 by Peter Bynum at Little John Contemporary

Bynum began this work after his time working in New York’s East Village with a photo editor. When he saw the way slides became rich and vibrant when placed on a light box he asked himself why he couldn’t do that with painting.

In an interview with art historian and curator Dede Young, Bynum explained, “The bus shelters in New York started getting big, backlit print ads, maybe 6 feet by 8 feet. The colors were so bright, even at night, and I thought: What if light saturated a big painting the same way it saturates these big photographs, with the light coming through paint from the Other Side, like a giant light box. So I was looking at this as a way to expand the visual territory available for painting.”

No. 141 by Peter Bynum at Little John Contemporary

“There’s some sort of secret world in the paintings that is brought out with this light that comes from behind and presses beyond the edges of the glass. This goes so far beyond what traditional painting on canvas has ever been able to achieve. Peter Bynum has made one breakthrough after another, and pushed the language of painting into a new place. It changes the conversation,” said Dede Young about the artist’s work.

Brighten up a September day with Peter Bynum’s Illuminated Paintings at Little John Contemporary.

- Jen Wallace

Peter Bynum
Illuminated Paintings
Little John Contemporary
Sept. 6 – Oct. 6
547 West 27th Street, Suite 207
New York, NY 10001