Artist Willy Bo Richardson Announces Museum Acquisition, Solo Show at Richard Levy Gallery

Albuqueruqe, NM, May 03, 2018 --(PR.com)-- Willy Bo Richardson’s multi-decade series, Number 1 (1999) has been acquired by the Albuquerque Museum for its permanent collection.

To celebrate the acquisition, Richardson’s long-time dealer Richard Levy Gallery, also in Albuquerque, will be hosting a solo show called “Navigation” in the project space from April 20 to May 25.

“My Number 1 was a great intuitive leap against the backdrop of New York intellectualism in the late 90s, which had declared ‘painting is dead,’” he writes. “I felt like I lived in a culture of no unified tradition for painting, or that the tradition had become the end, or deconstruction of tradition. I simply longed for a system in which I could grow and better myself with the grace and freedom of contemporary thought, while retaining a respect for improving on an objective craft. Craft in this case, being proportion, elements of composition and rules of beauty in their most simplified forms. I needed a first step, a first atomic structure, a first declaration in relation to history and natural wonder. This was my number 1. I had chills of excitement all the while a centered calm while making this painting. I cannot fully express how much joy I felt... like meeting a long-lost family member for the first time.”

Richardson received an MFA from Pratt Institute in 2000. In 2011 his work was included in “70 Years of Abstract Painting” at Jason McCoy Gallery in New York, which assembled works by modern and contemporary painters, including Josef Albers, Hans Hofmann and Jackson Pollock. He was honored to be one of eight SITE Santa Fe SPREAD finalists in 2014. His work and vision was featured on the PBS weekly arts series ¡COLORES! and featured in New Mexico Magazine’s April 2018 issue.

Richard Levy Gallery wrote: “Richardson stretches vertical bands of color so intense across each canvas that they seem to crackle like neon. Gripping the viewer, a humming field suspends the sensation of time. He has described his act of painting as a sort of meditation, a give-and-take with gravity and the universal laws that determine our experience of the physical world.”