EXHIBITION VIEWS | PRESS RELEASE
CHARLES MANION – HUM OF WATER
October 23 – November 29, 2026
Opening Saturday, October 24th, 4 – 6 pm
79 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, NY
For more information please email contact@halseymckay.com
Charles Manion, TBT 2, Acrylic on burlap over boat ladder, 17.5 x 52.75 inches
Halsey McKay and TURN Gallery are pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Charles Manion. A long-time sailor, Manion finds motive in the landscape of Montauk, Long Island. Looking, he is equally at home on the sea he sails and surfs as shores he wanders often gathering flotsam to materialize future artworks. Building, Manion’s canvased sculptures are solely constructed vessels that summon a calmness of observation and travel across emotional and physical realms.
In this new body of work, Manion revisits the past. Connecting sea to land, a boat ladder originally constructed for his passengers shifts into the form of a stretcher for burlap. A previously obvious design in the water now serves as the basis for ethereal paintings which both grasp and return the viewer’s gaze. With a joyful approach to carpentry, Manion arranges his compositions from the inside out—building layers of gesso, molding paste, and pigment that connect foundational groundwork to higher realms of artistic expression. This upward trajectory, mirroring the architectural ambition of the ladder, signifies movement from the earthly experience to a higher plane.
Through this extension of his practice, Manion connects his world with those on the outside, inviting them into an endless hum of possibilities: between painting and sculpture, water and land, physicality and poetry.
Charles Manion has previously exhibited in exhibitions at TURN Gallery, Shrine Gallery, Tripoli Gallery, Hesse Flatow Gallery, Arts Center at Duck Creek, Outeast Gallery, and The Ludwig Museum of Koblenz in Germany, curated by Julian Schnabel. He studied painting at The School of Visual Arts in the 1980s and currently lives and works in Montauk, NY.