Opening Reception
Saturday, February 28, 3-5 pm

On View
February 26 – March 1, 2026

Nüart Gallery
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Tuesday-Saturday, 10 AM – 5 PM

Flow 3

Spanning more than thirteen feet in length, Flow 3 (triptych) unfolded slowly over the course of a winter. Reflecting on the work’s creation, Richardson writes:

“This painting took shape over the course of a winter.

I laid down the first layers of yellow and had many ideas about what should happen next—movements of color while the paint was still wet.

But when I returned to the studio, the painting asked me to wait.

So I waited. I have to admit I was a little on edge, having been born into a time when the Industrial Revolution still has its grip on us.

Day after day I returned, expecting the next step to reveal itself. Instead the canvas simply emanated yellow—yellow upon yellow. Quiet. Complete in its own way.

It was enough just to look. My own private viewing, though the painting was not yet finished. To stand there and experience the warmth and light of those fields of yellow.

This continued through the winter.

Then, when spring arrived, the painting was ready to be painted on again. In that moment I knew what to do—how to move, how to act, how to engage. How to make.

Sometimes the work is in fearless listening.”

LA Art Week 2026 – Key Events and Highlights

LA Art Week 2026 brings the city alive with contemporary art presentations, gallery openings, and collector gatherings across multiple venues. The week is anchored by FREIZE Los Angeles at Santa Monica Airport (Feb 26 – Mar 1) and the Felix Art Fair at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (Feb 25 – Mar 1), offering collectors and artists a dynamic mix of exhibitions and events. Among these, Nuart Gallery at Bergamot Station presents selected works during Frieze Week, including Willy Bo Richardson’s Flow 3 (triptych) with a reception on Saturday, Feb 28. LA Art Week is an opportunity to explore the city’s vibrant art scene, connect with galleries, and experience contemporary work across multiple scales and formats.

Nuart LA Selections 2025 offered a moment of sustained engagement with Bergamot Station’s vibrant exhibition community, which helped shape the rhythms of seeing and being seen that mark LA Art Week. This dialogue continues in the presentation of Flow 3 (triptych), exploring immersive scale and chromatic presence within the context of Nuart’s expanding program.

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“The short answer is, “they’re not just stripes.” A more complex response is revealed upon closer inspections of works featured in Time Dissolves Here, an exhibition of his works that opens Friday, December 5, at Nüart Gallery. “

Pasatiempo is a weekly arts-and-culture magazine, widely regarded as Northern New Mexico’s leading source for exhibition reviews, features, and cultural commentary.

Online version of the article here: Willy Bo Richardson Pasatiempo Interview

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In order for an artist to make it to the thirty-year mark, that person has got to have chutzpah, or a big ego, or both. It would otherwise be impossible to work tirelessly toward an obscure goal, against the interest of our mainstream culture, and against the interest of having a comfortable lifestyle.

At the age of nineteen, I called my mom from an ISD phone booth in India to let her know I had not taken my flight back and was “never coming home.” I swam and drank from the Ganges, gave up my name, and let everything float downstream. I found comfort in liminal space and in many ways got what I was looking for. After six months, I’d stepped in water buffalo shit one too many times and succumbed to external notions that I had no social standing and no practical life experience. I didn’t want to be a dropout.

I maintained a defiant stance stateside by studying art and tried my hand at being a hermit in Bastrop, Texas. Let’s just say I spent a good number of years building a wall between myself and cultural norms before later being tamed by my wife, good friends, and banging my head against the wall. The point is, I spent many years building up my own way of going about things and defending it or ignoring feedback. This is the tough shell any artist needs to keep going.

When I was an undergrad at the University of Texas, those “in the know” told me that I should study graphic design instead of painting. When I was working at an art supply store in Philly, I was told by the store manager to start setting my eyes on more attainable goals like becoming a store manager. When I went to grad school in Brooklyn in the late nineties, painting was considered dead. Those “in the know” were telling me to stop painting. I had become accustomed to not listening to advice by then.

I know that painting cycles between dead and alive every few years, but I didn’t fully grasp that at the time. I just knew that when I visited the School of Visual Arts studios, in New York, a grad student who was tying her shoes and other personal objects to her studio floor told me, “If you want to keep painting, don’t get an MFA here.” It reminded me of a zombie film where all the painting students became installation and video artists. “Get out while you can” was her warning. So I went to Pratt Institute instead, the only school where the painting studios were filled with painters. Brooklyn still had beautiful neighborhoods with boarded-up crack houses and rent was less than $1,000 a month.

Halfway through my thesis, I turned my paintings to the wall. I had to listen to my inner voice, to start over from scratch despite my thesis deadline. (I ended up staying an extra semester.) I began with proportion and painted vertical lines as a measuring device. Then I studied one element of color phenomena at a time, which evolved into my current practice. I did not know this would become a multi-decade body of work. I simply fell in love, and as it unfolded it touched me on more profound levels. The attraction continued long enough for me to understand that in order to really see this through, I would have to commit.

It wasn’t the magical romantic moments when everything came together easily that pulled me through. It was diligence, patience, and a willingness to grow and mature. I could be talking about any meaningful commitment, for that matter. It’s a rare and precious situation to stick it out these days … There is a conspiracy in our culture to exchange the old for the new—with all things. Sellers are simply trying to get us to buy new things, but it’s also our culture’s fear of death and aging—which surfaces as a fascination with the new and the young.

So it’s admirable for an artist to make a commitment, but it’s also important to question one’s motivation and ways of working. It’s all part of the process. An artist must take a look at the underpinnings of the philosophy of one’s paintings. Is it my stubborn ways that have kept me on this singular path for so long? I spent four years questioning my motivations. I mark the beginning of this search with the death of my mom. I had a year of mourning and introspection and did not exhibit my paintings anywhere. My income from painting also disappeared. It was a suitable response to the loss in my life.

My mom, as every mom should, thought the world of me. Whatever I chose to do was fantastic. With my main cheerleader gone, a certain confidence was also gone. This marked the beginning of my doubt. I also questioned many aspects of my life that had been consistent over the years, including my meditation practice. The paintings I made became loose and blurred through the tears. They are quite beautiful. They did not lose their verticality, though.

Since my paintings are philosophy in motion, I also took another look at the Greek philosophers. I was especially attracted to the pre-Socratics, those who came before the time when mythos was pushed aside by logos. These early philosophers were in awe of the mystery, and though they could not understand, they would call on their muses (feminine intuitive wisdom) and define “being and becoming” in abstract and poetic ways. Heraclitus, 2,500 years ago, said, “You cannot step in the same river twice.” Around the same time, the historical Buddha gave teachings on impermanence and dependent origination.

Still, I found my stripes.

I also tried to break them apart in paintings, through forced execution. I painted circles, shapes, painterly abstract motifs, horizontal breaks—they only became fodder for what I’m attracted to.

So why this? Why “stripes”?

(They aren’t stripes, by the way.)

Within a limited framework, there is no energy wasted on a quest for originality. I do not work in the realm of ideation (the formation of ideas or concepts), nor do I work in the realm of discursive thought (proceeding from subject to subject). Yes, I am aware that the world wants both of these to be central to my creative process, but I set out on this path with an unfolding understanding that what I need, and what the world needs, is a lodestone that orients people toward what has staying power. What is consistent is not the outer and inner phenomena we are fascinated by, but the unchanging mind itself. I represent that by essentially marrying myself to a mode of working. It’s not a random choice, however. Gravity makes all objects and liquids fall to the center of the earth. These lines blur and travel along the arc of my body. The circle continues outside the canvas, and returns.

I find myself at a jumping-off point. Our experiences are dreamlike, and from here I lift off. Please excuse my abstraction in this coming paragraph … I see vertical strokes as the last bastion of creativity in painting. It is not total freedom. It is the tension of knowing freedom is there and working with the limited structure that tethers us to this cycle. When I paint, I am aware of my condition, but I strive toward freedom. Little by little, I cease from making discursive actions. Whenever restless thinking wanders out, I withdraw it once again, subdue it, and rest in what’s in front of me. I simply move from one stroke to the next, one color to the next.

It’s simple, but not easy.

In the painting series Navigation, I have found my way through what I consider to be the result of this four-year questioning process. The paintings were not the answers, but aesthetically the questions themselves, including inner doubt and outer pressure and total expanse and possibility.

Willy Bo Richardson, Santa Fe
Sa
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Opening reception Friday, December 5, 5–7 PM
December 5-21, 2025

Time Dissolves Here, a solo exhibition at Nüart Gallery of more than twenty paintings by Willy Bo Richardson. Luminous chromatic paintings explore the emotional and psychological resonance of color. Richardson creates spacial planes that invite stillness and contemplation.

Driven by an avid curiosity and a profound commitment to listening and looking, Richardson’s work presents itself as a multi-decade series. His paintings can be seen as highlighting an optical effect, or through the lens of an ideological framework. The intuitive cadence of his brushwork translates into a visual experience that feels both meditative and alive, where repetition becomes a kind of visual music. Letting intuition take precedence over deliberation, he approaches painting as a physical dialogue—a direct, embodied response to color and gesture.

Color, for Richardson, operates as an emotional geometry: a system of relationships that push and pull, harmonize and collide. He explores how certain hues can soothe while others energize, striving to create combinations that evoke a balanced emotional response—both calming and awakening.

Time Dissolves Here offers an invitation to pause and to return to the essential elements of being.

Nüart Gallery
Hours: 10-5, Daily
670 Canyon Road, Santa Fe NM

Nüart Gallery Press Release and Exhibition Information

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In art, music, and literature, love has always been one of the major engines of human creativity. In celebration of love, romance, and the mysterious longings of the heart, R-E-D features a diverse collection of artworks filled with romance for our annual Valentine’s Day exhibition. Each work offers a distinct perspective on the color red and its unmistakable relationship with human desire and life itself. 

Nüart Gallery
February 14 – March 2, 2025
Reception: Friday Feb 14, 5 – 7 pm
670 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM

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Nüart Gallery LA
February 22 – March 15, 2025
Reception: Saturday February 22, 4 – 6 pm

Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Avenue #B4
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Invitational exhibition features two Los Angeles based artists alongside established artists from the Nüart represented roster. This program addresses a recurrent challenge in contemporary art: the tension between conceptual innovation and technical mastery. It endeavors to harmonize creative vision with disciplined execution, fostering a measured dialogue between idea and technique.

The works on display engage with current debates in visual art by examining issues of form, composition, and the function of imagery within a modern context. The selected artists employ a measured approach to their practice, emphasizing analytical rigor alongside aesthetic concerns. Their investigations into both abstract and figurative modes offer a reflective commentary on the evolving dynamics of contemporary art.

The exhibition features works by Michael Bergt, William T Carson, Shar Coulson, Emmett Culligan, Lawrence Fodor (LA), Alberto Galvez, Ehja Kang (LA), Juan Kelly, Emilio Lobato, Joseph Ostraff, Willy Bo Richardson, Guillaume Seff, Peter Stephens, John Tarahteeff, Kevin Tolman, and Cecil Touchon.

Nuart Gallery welcomes thoughtful reflection and engagement from the art community and art enthusiasts as they explore the balanced approach embodied in Nüart LA Selections 2025. The exhibition emphasizes intellectual inquiry and disciplined artistic exploration. Discover Innovative Art in Santa Monica!

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January 29 – March 8, 2025

514 Central Ave SW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
(505) 766-9888

Created in Richardson’s signature style these 24 x 36 inch paintings complement a space both individually or as curated groupings.

Richardson says about the series Carrying and Soaring, “When ‘disruptions’ are a norm, perhaps what we are looking for is a loadstone that points towards consistency and quietude. My paintings offer space for peace and contemplation of beauty in the moment.”

By the late 1990s painting had been declared “dead” several times over. But for the contemporary painter Willy Bo Richardson, painting became a “practice” to orient himself and find meaning in a post-modern world. Richardson states, “Painting as a medium still takes root in our historic pre-verbal psyche.”

Influenced by Robert Irwin’s large scale scrim installation in 1998 titled Prologue: x 18³ at the Dia Art Foundation on 22nd street, Richardson set out to “influence space” with paintings. Richardson States, ″What blew me away, was Irwin’s comprehension and ability to point to space… Irwin was able to hold my attention with this liminal wonderment. So I asked myself if painting could be a vehicle to do the same.″

Richardson’s paintings have attracting power and intriguing spacial effects. Colors not only shift within bands of color, but shift within strokes. Joseph Albers used the term “vibrating boundaries” to explain the effect of colors in close proximity that are near-contrasting. Richardson experiments with multiple canvases at the same time, exploring color and spontaneous compositional ideas.

Artsy’s mission is to expand the art market to support more artists and art in the world, a platform for collecting and discovering art. One can explore current and past exhibitions at museums and galleries, biennials, and cultural events through Artsy.

View the exhibition online: Carrying and Soaring: Richard Levy Gallery

Richard Levy Gallery fosters a mission to support contemporary artists by providing exposure for artists in the international marketplace both in the gallery and online. The gallery presents six to ten gallery exhibitions per year, produces periodic satellite projects, and participates in select art fairs. Richard Levy Gallery was established in 1991. You can view previous exhibitions at Richard Levy here: 
Miami Project
Clockwork for Oracles
Seattle Art Fair

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