RANDY WRAY

Early passes of oil are buried beneath or partially obscured by later applications—these initial gestures are integral to the painting’s development and final appearance. The resulting works are laced with the material evidence of their becoming. In u (2023–25), prior color choices become halos around new shapes; as in Sign (2023–25), ridged contours of underpaintings become texture on the surface of the final layer of oil. Indeed, the medium, thickened with alkyd or left to behave as it wants, always conveys a haptic palpability on Wray’s canvases. A red, coral-like entity at the top of Bilateral (2023–25) approaches three-dimensionality, built up as it was through numerous layers. One can imagine the sensitive touch of the palette knife used to make the sharply-defined radii in Tincture (2023–25), evocative of “turkey tail” mushrooms. With his works on paper, all titled Prehistory (2020), Wray translates his process of layering oil into other media—graphite, crayon, gouache, charcoal, colored pencil, ink, pastel, and more—to achieve complex depth on these more delicate supports.

Wray’s arresting images bridge the anatomical, the terrestrial, and the formal; as Bob Nickas writes in Karma’s forthcoming monograph, “painting and botanical procedures may be thought to merge in a studio-arboretum where cross-pollination is at the heart of the artist’s practice.” In Nest (2022–25), a form inspired by an MRI of the artist’s brain could be a turtle shell, its halves mirroring each other. The function of the brain is an enduring interest of Wray’s—Mind-body (2023–25) translates the problem of dualism into an optical fight between searingly hot reds and pinks and muted, umber surrounds. The intensely saturated hues that recur across his paintings disrupt and activate his otherwise subdued, neutral palette, suggesting a collision of the modern and the ancient.