Affiliated with Southern California’s “Light and Space” movement, Hap Tivey created light sculptures and installations in the late 1960s while living and working in Los Angeles along with James Turrell, Robert Irwin, and Douglas Wheeler. After moving to New York in the 1970s, he continued to explore the perceptual qualities of light in his “rear-projection boxes” comprised of paintings behind sheets of reflective mesh and translucent polymer. Challenging the luminescent characteristics of traditional painting, Study for “AO Gate” #1 is one of these paintings-within-a painting, containing a stretched canvas embedded in a frame behind a sheet of industry-grade Polacoat, a material used for rear projection light and movie screens. Dependent on the viewer’s position and the angle of light in the room, abstract shapes on the canvas appear like floating shadows barely visible behind the murky green screen.