Ken Weathersby: O.L-i Paintings at Kent Place Gallery

The Kent Place Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of artworks by Ken Weathersby from November 10, 2025–January 10, 2026. There will be a reception for the artist Friday, November 14 from 5:00–7:00 p.m.

Weathersby’s paintings in this show are also three-dimensional objects, whose abstractly painted surfaces project in sculptural low relief, and are broken by openings to dark voids.

About his “O.L-I” works, Weathersby states, “These channel memories of the psychedelic imagery that made its way into mass culture during my childhood. Cartoons, live action kids’ shows and the sets of nighttime TV programs like 'Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In' were all imbued in that period with a vernacular version of trippy hallucination. Rowan and Martin’s ‘joke wall’ was a set that appeared on every episode of the show. A tall wall painted with swirling pink and yellow abstract forms was full of little windows that would suddenly swing open, revealing the face of someone poking out from the darkness behind, who would then tell a joke. Made many years later, these paintings are partly inspired by remembering the spells those things cast. Flowing colors meet with geometric interruptions on the works’ surfaces, surfaces which are then pierced through with openings to an interior. Behind their painted faces, the paintings have an inside, physically as well as psychologically.”

Weathersby has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, with notable solo shows at Minus Space (Brooklyn), Pierogi Gallery (New York), NIAD Art Center Gallery (Richmond, CA), Some Walls (Oakland, CA), and the John Cotton Dana Gallery, Rutgers University (Newark).  His work has been included in group exhibitions at the National Academy of Art Museum (New York), Pazo Fine Arts (Washington, DC), and I.S. Projects (Leiden, Netherlands), among many others.

Weathersby has received numerous awards and residencies, including two Individual Artist Painting Fellowships from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Council/NJSCA. His work has been reviewed in The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, Brooklyn Magazine, New American Paintings, Two Coats of Paint, Painter’s Bread, and elsewhere.  Weathersby holds an MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art.  He was born in Mississippi and has lived in the New York City area since 1990. He has taught art at Kent Place School since 2002.

For an appointment to view the exhibition, contact Gallery Director Ken Weathersby at weathersbyk@kentplace.org.
Kent Place Gallery is on the campus of Kent Place School, 42 Norwood Avenue, Summit, NJ.
 

Image: “O.L-i 1”, 2022, Ken Weathersby