David Richard Gallery is pleased to present some of the newest paintings by Andrew Huffman that focus on his latest curved motifs and structures in Curve Ahead, an online exhibition. The presentation consists of twelve paintings, all acrylic on canvas and some stretched over wood panels, that span from 2017 to the end of 2024. Curatorially, the paintings were selected to map the artist’s trajectory from his early square forms and grid compositions to the introduction of triangular shapes and negative space to his most recent curved structures. Saturated hues and a keen ability to manage and leverage colors and their adjacent interactions allows Huffman to continue on his trajectory of creating optical and visually challenging paintings inspired by nature, geographical locations and his personal life.

Hard edge painting, pristine surfaces, stunning color palettes and detailed arrays and patterns are all characteristics of Andrew Huffman’s paintings over the past decade. He has explored the interaction of shapes and color within his compositions to create optical and illusory effects that challenge visual perception. His painting surfaces, construction of the supports as well as the final paintings are all meticulously executed. His paintings stand proud off the surface of the wall by a couple of inches using an interior stretcher and cleat system that he constructs himself. Thus, his paintings look as though they are hovering in front of the wall instead of hanging from the wall. On most paintings he also paints the side of the canvases as they wrap around the deep support so that the grids, patterns, and color continue off the surface. This provides a literal depth that further supports the interior illusion of space and volume within the flat center of the painting. The combination of floating off the wall and illusion of spatial depth subverts the conventions of painting itself and presenting / installing a painting.

Huffman’s compositions initially focused on square shapes within rigorous grids where each shape contained a single saturated hue. He has successfully mastered color interactions and the impact of adjacent colors on color mixing in the viewer’s eye. This is an important quality to successfully master the illusion of dimensional space and visual depth within a composition in a two-dimensional plane. The artist subtly uses neutralized colors and shades of grey to emphasize certain brighter hues or to make other hues pop and emphasize contrast, yet other times the neutrals fade to the background and let the saturated hues push forward or pull back to further emphasize dimensional space. His geometry box and paint palette are full of options to challenge visual perception.

Triangular shapes emerged in 2022 while living and working in San Francisco and observing the Ice Plants with their triangular shaped leaves along the California roadsides. This interest has perpetuated since an even earlier stint while living in Yosemite. The triangle shape provides the compositions directional movement, making them dynamic and creating more complex shapes, patterns, and tessellation of forms.

About the same time, the artist explored positive and negative shapes and spaces within his paintings. The negative spaces provided a quiet place to rest one’s eye from the often colorful and optically dense compositions. They also created imaginary portals and points of entry into the compositions that give the paintings both spatial depth and conceptual depth. In other words, the theoretical ponderings and metaphors for what is beyond the surface colors or behind the surface of the canvas. This has been a query for many artists and visited in art history with deconstructed paintings, exposed supports, using the verso of canvases, slashes in the canvas, and open woven supports—all to reveal what is behind it all.

Curves and curvaceous structures are the newest addition in Huffman’s quest to mine new imagery, motifs, shapes and intellectual musings into his compositions. The curved shape adds a strong contrast to the triangular shapes and grids, creating distinct structures that sit in front of the triangular patterned grounds with passages of negative space. The curved shapes are technically challenging and complex because of the need to carefully and subtly blend the color transitions so that the three-dimensional shapes are maintained and believable as they become the cornerstone of the perception of value transitions resulting in spatial depth within the compositions.

Huffman’s paintings have always been inspired by his family, personal life, and geogrpahy. Thus, a mixture of literal places where he has lived and visited, such as the California Ice Plants and the jubilant palettes inspired by the high altitude and open skies while living in Colorado for nearly a decade. But his inspiration also comes from a personal and emotional place, the spaces in his mind and memories of loved ones, including his beloved dog Luna and the painting, “Frisbee with Luna”. This influence of geographical place and psychological space was the inspiration for a recent solo exhibition title, “Places and Spaces”.

About Andrew Huffman:
 
Huffman was born in Kansas and received his BFA in painting and printmaking in 2008 from the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio. In 2012, he earned an MFA in painting with honors from the University of Kansas. He has taught courses in drawing, painting, and 2D design at the University of Kansas, KS; Metropolitan State University, CO; the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, CO; and currently at Denver University, CO. He lives and works out of his studio in Denver, Colorado.
 
Huffman was recently included in a curated group show titled No Straight Lines at Hexton Gallery in Aspen, CO, alongside artists Herbert Bayer, Kenneth Noland, Richard Carter, Evan Hecox, and Phillip K. Smith (2024). The Pardon Collection acquired Huffman’s work recently and was featured in a group exhibition drawn from the collection entitled Subtle Shifts, at The Vault in Denver, CO that ran concurrently with
his recent past solo show titled Places and Spaces in Los Angeles at the Edward Cella Gallery (2023). He has exhibited two solo shows at the David Richard Gallery in New York City.
 
In 2022, Huffman was hired by artist Eamon Ore-Giron and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver to draft and paint a largescale 20 ‘ x 50 ’ mural for the show titled “Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning”. Huffman presented a site-specific interactive multi-media installation entitled Domino Projection at the Denver Art Museum in 2020, and previously has made temporary site-specific installations at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (2019), the Marie Sharpe Gallery of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (2019), the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2018), and the Redline Contemporary Art Center (2016-2018).
 
In 2021, Huffman was selected to paint a permanent 3,000 square-foot mural for Price Development Group in downtown Denver. In 2020, the artist completed two permanent large-scale public art installations for Continuum Partners entitled, Modulated 32 (#1 & #2) in downtown Denver. The artist was awarded a two-year artist in residency at the Redline Contemporary Art Center in Denver (2016-2018) and with the Facebook Artists in Residency Program in Denver (2018) during which he created a permanent mural and installation for the Facebook offices. Recently, Huffman was awarded another two-year artist studio with Redline’s Satellite Studio Program (2023-2024) in Denver.
 
Huffman’s artworks have been exhibited internationally at the Neurotitan Gallery in Berlin, Germany, as well as the Sluice Exchange Berlin at the Kuehlhaus in Berlin, Germany, and in a public mural in Old Dali City in Yunnan, China.

Associated Artist

• Andrew Huffman

Associated Exhibitions

• Andrew Huffman Curve Ahead
  Mapping Path from Square Forms and Grid Structures to Curved Shapes and Negative Space
  March 3, 2025 - April 13, 2025
  MORE INFO

Associated News

• March 15, 2025
  Press Release - Andrew Huffman - Curve Ahead


• April 12, 2021
  Andrew Huffman
  Revel in Art 2021
  


• September 21, 2020
  Andrew Huffman's first New York solo exhibition opens at David Richard Gallery
  ArtDaily.com
  September 21, 2020
  


• September 15, 2020
  Andrew Huffman: Hued Vibrations
  GalleriesNow.net
  September 15, 2020
  


• September 1, 2020
  Press Release - Andrew Huffman - "Hued Vibrations"


• June 23, 2020
  Andrew Huffman, In Installation
  Young Space
  June 23, 2020
  


• January 30, 2020
  SCALING UP: Translating paintings into large scale architectural elements
  Public Art Services Blog
  January 30, 2020
  


• June 12, 2019
  Color Theory explores math and visual at GOCA, plus more events this week
  Colorado Spring Independent
  June 12, 2019
  Alissa Smith
  


• October 1, 2018
  Andrew Huffman
  Modulated: Color and Structure
  International Art Exhibitions 2018
  
  


• August 27, 2018
  Andrew Huffman's debut exhibition opens at David Richard Gallery
  ArtDaly.org, 08/27/2019
  
  


• August 14, 2018
  Press Release - Andrew Huffman 'Modulated: Color and Structure'