It was like seeing an old friend—or 20 old friends—and falling back into a sense of familiarity as if no time had passed at all. That’s how I felt upon entering La Colombe d’Or’s display of 20 works by the late Floyd Newsum, Jr., his highly personal language of ladders, Josephine Baker, and those sumptuous layers of paint on view in the light-filled hallway.
Curated by the hotel’s inaugural Gallery-in-Residence, Bond Contemporary, “Cadence of Light: Signal, Surface, Field” is at La Colombe d’Or, 3410 Montrose Blvd.—just park on a side street, enter through the front doors, and ask the host/hostess for access to the exhibition.
As Bond Contemporary puts it: “Floyd Newsum, Jr. developed an abstract language in which line signals, color structures, and surface holds light. Across these works, measured frameworks such as grids, bands, and horizons meet drifting marks and pauses. The paintings do not resolve into a single message; instead, they sustain a conversation between discipline and improvisation.”
The experience of stepping into this exhibition is not unlike the feeling I had when the doors swung open on “Evolution of Sight” in May 2023 at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, revealing a huge retrospective of his work, though the Houston exhibition is on a much, much smaller scale. And unlike the Madison exhibition and the posthumous “Floyd Newsum: House of Grace” at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, there are several smaller, whimsical gouaches on display. They are little visual treats for the viewer, providing new insights into Professor Newsum’s vast imagination.
The exhibition closes Dec. 9. Make your way down Montrose Blvd. and give yourself an early Christmas present.
