Bentley Gallery is pleased to present CHROMATIC, a collection of stunning works by Heather Hutchison, Dion Johnson, Michael Reafsnyder, Richard Roth, and Eric Zammitt. 

"All of these works start by stopping us in our tracks. That happens when you see something worth looking at: an object or occurrence that is out of the ordinary, that arrests your attention, piques your curiosity, and makes you want to know more—while experiencing more and more.

The paintings by the five artists in this exhibition do not look like one another. But they do something very similar: reveal how comfortable each of us is with our inability to understand what’s going on right before our eyes. As we respond to their works, we show our true colors, either slowing down, paying attention, and keeping our egos from getting in the way of our perceptions; or pausing briefly and moving on, treating their works as if they’re nothing more than pretty pictures or pleasant decorations, whose attractions are entirely a matter of taste: to be embraced or rejected just because we like them, or not. When you get right down to it, these two reactions are the only options these works give viewers. Dividing us into two groups, the works by these five artists reveal that abstract painting has social consequences, and that it has a lot more to do with who we are as people—in other words, our identities—than is often assumed, even by people who should know better."- David Pagel