Images are made through exposure to light but some consider visual art to in fact be defined by shadows, where the true nature of the subject can ofen be found. The third of a series of annual winter shows at Bill Arning Exhibitions curated in response to the conditions of the Hudson Valley in the colder months, Darkness will present visitors with the opportunity to contemplate a time of year associated with quiet, stillness, and sometimes isolation through works by Franco Andrés Rodriguez, Daniella Dooling, Steven Evans, John Franklin, Kevin Tobin, and Brian Wood.

Like the snow and cold-weather cuddling—the themes of the gallery’s previous winter exhibitions—our relationship to the dark presents distinct opportunities for artistic exploration. Daniella Dooling uses found bird’s nests, colored a light-absorbing black, as a symbol for the increasingly ubiquitous wildfires damaging fragile ecosystems. Steven Evans creates black-on-black drawings, playing with reflexivity of certain pigments to conjure queer histories. John Franklin has long experimented with material abstraction to create witty, seductive images; his two works in this exhibition, created 27 years apart, show his sustained interest in the possibilities of darkness to create energetic affect in viewers.

Rounding out the exhibition, Franco Andrés Rodriguez, Kevin Tobin, and Brian Wood all utilize dark surfaces to reveal nightmarish images that emerge from the shadows in their works. While Andrés Rodriguez uses doubling to represent dark queer spaces where anything is allowed, Tobin and Wood play on classic Surrealist themes, allowing for disconcerting dreamlike images to emerge.

Darkness contains undeniable contradictions. Created by the relationship between the available bouncing photons and the limits of perception built into the human eye, darkness can be both safe and dangerous, boring and sexy, sinister and beneficent, metaphoric and literal. These six artists, based in New York City, the Hudson Valley, Houston, and Cleveland, might seem to have created light-absorbing apertures that limit perception. However, it is the hope of the gallery that visitors are able to enjoy the lovely, faint light of winter mornings and allow their eyes to adjust to dark realms.