David Richard Gallery is pleased to present a series of abstract color paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Carl E. Hazlewood (born 1951, Guyana, South America) that have never been presented as a group until now. The paintings began initially by staining, then built up with layers of color, medium, and additions of metallic, fluorescent and mirrored materials that brought complexity, depth and texture. This exhibition, Demerara Dreaming: Triptych Paintings: 1996 – 2003, also debuts the Gallery’s opening of a new space in Chelsea, its second location in New York.

The Hazlewood presentation includes fourteen narrow horizontal paintings, each a triptych measuring from 10 x 37 to mostly 10 x 44 and 10 x 46 inches, up to one very long painting at 10 x 66 inches. The three canvases comprising each triptych are stretched on separate stretcher bars with a larger horizontal canvas in the center flanked by two smaller vertical rectangular canvases on either side. The canvases themselves are the salvaged edges and discarded portions from earlier and much larger canvases by Hazlewood that he painted as early as the 1980s and cut them down to the desired shape and dimensions at the time of their creation. Years later, from 1996 to 2003, these remnants became the source material for a series of roughly 25 small horizontal paintings, of which only these 14 remain and are presented now for the first time as a group. The other eleven paintings were gifted to various individuals and institutions.