A Material Dance brings together two artists separated by generations and continents yet united by their radical reimagining of painting’s physical possibilities. Lucio Fontana’s revolutionary Concetti Spaziali and Alteronce Gumby’s tactile glass paintings reveal a shared commitment to pushing beyond traditional artistic boundaries through direct material intervention.

The cosmological dimension of their work further binds these artists across time. Fontana’s precise cuts and punctures transformed the canvas from a passive surface into an active portal, creating an idea of infinity that challenged centuries of pictorial convention. His slashes weren’t acts of destruction but deliberate ruptures that invited viewers to experience space beyond the picture plane—a gesture toward the cosmos itself. Gumby’s interest in astrophysics and interstellar photography grounds his practice in similar universal concerns; his iridescent surfaces suggest nebulae and distant galaxies captured in resin and glass. In the work of both artists we see that true innovation requires not just new ideas but new ways of physically engaging with materials.