The Dark Series 2020
Dark Series (2020)
By Shane Townley
Created in January 2020, Dark Series emerged in a moment of quiet tension—just before COVID-19 would overtake New York City and alter the global landscape. The body of work consists entirely of black paintings, each differentiated not by color but by texture, density, and surface modulation. These canvases reject overt imagery, instead presenting layered terrains of matte absorption, gloss interruptions, ridged accumulations, and subtle fractures.
Townley, a highly sensitive and empathic artist, has often responded to environmental shifts in his practice. In Dark Series, that sensitivity manifests as anticipation. The works feel charged—less like abstractions and more like atmospheric recordings. Black becomes not emptiness, but compression: a gathering of unspoken weight.
The timing is critical.
The solo exhibition of Dark Series was installed in March 2020. As the work hung on the gallery walls—silent, heavy, immersive—New York began shutting down. Within days, lockdowns were implemented. The exhibition was effectively cut in half. What was meant to unfold publicly as a sustained encounter became abruptly suspended.
This interruption transforms the reading of the series. The paintings, already resonant with foreboding, became contextualized by crisis. The gallery space—once a site of contemplation—shifted into absence. Viewers disappeared. Streets emptied. The works remained, but without audience, as if enacting their own thesis on isolation and rupture.
In hindsight, Dark Series exists as both artwork and document. It marks a threshold: the final moment before collective stillness. The monochrome surfaces, once abstract meditations, now echo the psychological density of early pandemic uncertainty—fear without clarity, silence without resolution.
Importantly, these paintings are not illustrative of COVID. They do not depict masks, hospitals, or figures. Their power lies in their refusal to narrate. Instead, they hold space. They absorb light and return only fragments. They demand proximity and patience, qualities that suddenly became scarce in March 2020.
The exhibition’s truncation is inseparable from the work’s meaning. What began as a solo show became an unintended time capsule—an installation interrupted by history.