In the cold machinery of the contemporary art world—where detachment is often mistaken for depth and irony passes for intelligence — simply reveling in beauty is a rare act of rebellion.
Rarer still is the artist who builds an entire cosmology around it, who devotes their life not to provocation or disruption, but to devotion. Hunt Slonem is such an artist.
With Dreaming in Color: Bunnies, Butterflies & Birds, opening June 12 at DTR Modern Galleries’ SoHo flagship, Slonem invites us into his chromatic sanctuary—a universe governed by intuition, rhythm, and spiritual recall.
For over four decades, he has painted not with the arrogance of commentary, but with the discipline of prayer. In doing so, he has become one of the most enduring and quietly radical forces in American painting.
To understand Slonem, one must begin with his practice: a daily, near-liturgical act of painting animals—rabbits, birds, butterflies—with neither irony nor apology. The repetition of form is not a symptom of stasis but of sanctity. Like Gregorian chants or rosary beads, his motifs are mantras. The bunny becomes a Bodhisattva, the butterfly a benediction. His work reminds us that the ancient power of ritual is not in its novelty, but in its constancy.
Slonem does not render animals as quaint or ornamental. He resurrects them. They are avatars of something eternal—presence, persistence, purity. Their eyes do not look at us, they look through us. His surfaces, thick with oil and often cross-hatched with frenetic incisions, vibrate with the energy of things too alive to sit still. Color in his hands is not decorative but devotional—electric turquoises, cathedral golds, opera-house reds. His palette does not whisper. It sings.
While Slonem’s aesthetic is immediately recognizable, his impact lies not in repetition alone but in spiritual insistence. In a time when art often seeks to shock or dismantle, his paintings offer sanctuary. They do not scream. They hum. They create space for awe—not the kind engineered for Instagram, but the kind that lives quietly in the spine, in the space behind the eyes.
The artist’s process is monastic in tone. He paints in silence, surrounded by the sacred clutter of antique frames, live parrots, saints’ effigies, and mirrors gilded like reliquaries. His studio is not a factory or a lab. It is a chapel. The act of painting, for Slonem, is less a performance than a private sacrament.
Critics have often misunderstood his work, mistaking joy for superficiality, ornamentation for frivolity. Joy—true joy—is a serious thing. Here, Slonem’s quiet defiance lives. In a market obsessed with trauma, detachment, and digital coldness, he remains devoted to enchantment, to color, to wonder. He resists reduction. He persists in ecstasy.
With inclusion in over 250 museum collections, including the Guggenheim, The Whitney, and The Met, Slonem is not a cult figure. He is canon. Each painting hums with unique frequency. Each frame cradles not just a canvas, but a vibration.
Dreaming in Color at DTR Modern Galleries situates Slonem exactly where he belongs: in dialogue with collectors who do not just acquire art, but live with it. The gallery, known for its curatorial sophistication and global reach, is the ideal host for this latest invocation of Slonem’s timeless universe. The opening, which includes a book signing and artist appearance, will no doubt attract collectors, connoisseurs, and those in search of a different kind of enlightenment—one rendered not in silence, but in color.
To stand before one of Slonem’s works is not to analyze, but to remember. To remember joy. To remember presence. To remember what it is to see again—not with the critical gaze, but with the soul.
To experience the exhibition, join us for the opening reception on Thursday, June 12, at 6 p.m. at DTR Modern Galleries SoHo, located at 458 West Broadway.
View the collection and RSVP at www.dtrmodern.com, and follow the gallery on Instagram @dtrmodern for updates, highlights, and behind-the-scenes glimpses inside the vibrant world of Hunt Slonem.
