WATER MILL, NY.- Buddha & Mandala, an exhibition of color photographs by Bill Armstrong, is on view at Sara Nightingale Gallery, 688 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, NY, from August 3 through September 23, 2013. The exhibition of 25 works marks Armstrong’s 10th anniversary with the Gallery.

Since presenting his breakout show at Sara Nightingale in August of 2003, Armstrong has established an international reputation for rhapsodic color work that hovers between the real and the fantastic. The Gallery commemorates the anniversary with an installation of new floating Buddhas hung in the center of the gallery accompanied on the walls by Mandalas that were shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Buddha & Mandala photographs, part of Armstrong’s Infinity Series (begun in 1977), are made using his unique process of photographing hand-made collages of appropriated materials and manipulating them to create shimmering, vibrating images. Armstrong has invented an ephemeral world of his own at the intersection of photography, painting and collage. Extreme de-focusing enables him to blend and distill hues, creating rhapsodies of color that inspire meditation. He is known as a “master colorist.”

Armstrong’s work was featured in a two-person exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2008. He has exhibited work in numerous other museums including the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; Hayward Gallery, London; Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland; Centro Internazionale di Fotografia, Milan; and FOAM, Amsterdam. His photographs are included in the permanent collections of the Vatican Museum, Rome; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Houston Museum of Fine Arts; and the Bibliothèque National de France, Paris; among many others.

Armstrong’s work appears in Face: The New Photographic Portrait by William Ewing and Exploring Color Photography by Robert Hirsch, among others, and his Mandala #450 is the cover image for The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography by Lyle Rexer (Aperture, 2009). He has also been published in numerous periodicals including The New Yorker, The New York Times and Harper’s. Armstrong is on the faculty at the International Center of Photography and the School of Visual Arts.