Interviews From Yale Radio / Artists, Curators And More

Photo credit: portrait Melvin Way 1994, ARS artists rights society @ 2024 photo Andrew Castrucci, Melvin Way estate. This is an interview with the curator Andrew Castrucci. CO₂ Blues, scheduled since mid-2023, is the first exhibition of the enigmatic art of Melvin Way (1954-2024) since his passing, and the third solo show of his work with the gallery. It serves as a retrospective for a visionary who was one of the most admired self-taught artists in the contemporary art arena.  Way's mostly small-scale drawings are strange and alluring concoctions of science and art that seem intent on revealing the secrets of the universe.  They contain chemical and mathematical formulae, musical notes, abstract designs, and cryptic words and phrases.  It is hard to look at one without becoming entangled in trying to figure out what it means. “I felt like I was seeing another kind of infinity, thought made visible, wild nerves, optical barnacles coming to hermetic life, delirium legible,” wrote New York Magazine’s senior a