If Herr Street Could Talk

If Herr Street Could Talk is a homecoming exhibition honoring Harrisburg-born artist Alteronce Gumby. While he is now based in New York City, Gumby grew up on Herr Street only a few blocks from the Susquehanna Art Museum. A 2004 graduate of Harrisburg High School, Gumby went on to earn his MFA from the Yale School of Art. This exhibition brings his internationally recognized practice back to his hometown. 

Featuring twenty-six luminous works, If Herr Street Could Talk invites Harrisburg audiences to engage with Gumby’s captivating abstractions that evoke images of the cosmos and the infinite. Working within and beyond the traditions of modern abstraction, Gumby creates a visual language that is both structural and radiant. Echoing Sir Isaac Newton’s early experiments with light and prisms, Gumby incorporates glass and gemstones to refract and scatter light across the surface of his paintings. Each work becomes an ever-changing play of reflection and color, activated by the viewer’s movement and shifting perspective. These cosmic landscapes invite us to see color not as fixed, but as something alive and full of possibility.  

A special thank you to Alteronce Gumby Studio and Nicola Vassell Gallery for their generous collaboration.

Alteronce Gumby is a New York City-based artist whose practice spans painting, ceramics, installation, and film. Inspired by a transformative visit to a Picasso museum in Barcelona, he pursued formal art education at Duchess Community College, Hunter College (BFA), and the Yale School of Art (MFA in Painting and Printmaking). His work draws from the cosmos and the materiality of earthly and cosmic space, engaging viewers with luminous, iridescent colors that challenge perceptions of form, color, and identity. 

Gumby’s work has been exhibited at leading galleries such as Nicola Vassell Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, and Gagosian, as well as featured in publications such as ARTnews, Cultured, Frieze, Artnet, and Vogue. His work has been placed in the collections of the Guggenheim, Studio Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, and the Hirschorn. Gumby has participated in prestigious residencies, such as the Rauschenberg Residency and les Fondation des Étas-Unis in Paris. His recent award-winning documentary, COLOR, explores the global spectrum of color, and he is currently in production on its follow-up, COLOR in Nature. He also looks forward to his forthcoming solo exhibition, Walk on the Moon, opening at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in November 2025.