Opening Reception for Beyond the Rectangle – Vincent Baldassano at Chroma Gallery

Opening Reception date: Saturday, January 17, 3–7 p.m.

Show dates: January 13 – February 8, 2026

Chroma Fine Art Gallery is pleased to present Beyond the Rectangle – Vincent Baldassano, a solo exhibition highlighting the artist’s enduring exploration of shaped canvases and spatial invention. Long recognized as a tireless experimenter, Baldassano pushes painting beyond conventional boundaries, creating works that exist between painting, object, and environment.

Baldassano’s work is defined by a dynamic tension between amorphous, organic curves and precise geometric structures. These opposing forces coexist in illusionistic compositions where floating forms inhabit and disrupt rigid frameworks, giving rise to hybrid characters that feel at once floral, anatomical, and otherworldly.

Purely imaginative—derived from natural forms and abstracted from the human figure—Baldassano’s compositions transform familiar elements into exuberant, surreal organisms. Drawing inspiration from still life motifs such as fruits, vegetables, and flowers, his richly colored, shaped canvases conjure lush gardens of invention where sensuality and geometry, masculine and feminine, merge seamlessly. The titles of the works allude to the light, vegetation, and landscapes of western Connecticut, the Hudson Valley, Italy, Portugal, and northern Africa, reflecting the artist’s travels and lived experience.

Baldassano completed his first shaped canvases in 1968, exhibiting them at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, and later in 1971 at the Allan Frumkin and Allan Stone galleries in New York City. After losing much of his early work in a fire, he traveled to Portugal to continue the series, returning to Buffalo during the Portuguese Revolution, where he founded the Buffalo Ape Movement (BAM) and staged a series of experimental “Happenings” at the Albright Knox Art Gallery. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Baldassano moved to SoHo in New York City, becoming a founding member of the Manhattan Breakfast Club, a group of like-minded artists and writers. As a testament to his lasting influence, Baldassano was later featured in Loft Generation at Eric Firestone Gallery, an exhibition celebrating seminal artists working in downtown Manhattan during the pluralist period of the 1960s–80s.

Subsequent bodies of work, including his American Indian Series, synthesized symbolic imagery with abstraction and collage while returning to more rectangular formats, underscoring Baldassano’s continual reexamination of form, narrative, and material language.

Throughout his career, Baldassano has remained deeply committed to artistic experimentation, education, and community. His work reflects both a rigorous intellectual inquiry and a boundless imagination, offering viewers a vivid and immersive encounter with color, form, and space.

Beyond the Rectangle – Vincent Baldassano is on view January 13 through February 8, 2026. The public is warmly invited to attend the Opening Reception on Saturday, January 17, from 3–7 p.m., and to experience these transformative works in person.