British painter Bridget Riley’s ambition is to produce nothing less than “untrammeled perception.” Ms. Riley’s earliest investigations of optical effects made her a major figure of the Op Art movement of the 1960s. Her black-and-white pattern paintings appeared to vibrate and provoked strong, sometimes nauseating psychological and physiological effects. Since her first solo exhibition in 1962 in London, Ms. Riley has continued to be an influential investigator of abstract painting’s potential to reclaim what a viewer sees in the fleeting moments before comprehension gains control of the mind’s faculties. In the last decade, she has been the subject of several retrospectives, including one organized by the Tate Britain, and her art is held in public collections around the world. Throughout her career, Ms. Riley’s interest in sensation has been predominantly focused on movement, and as her current exhibition at PaceWildenstein demonstrates, Ms. Riley deftly transforms the flat canvas support into undulating, vibrant surfaces of color and light.

Twelve of Ms. Riley’s most recent oil-on-linen paintings, several preparatory studies, and one wall painting are now on view at the gallery’s two locations in Midtown and Chelsea. The paintings, her largest works to date, follow a format Ms. Riley first developed in the late 1990s. Curvilinear forms, leaf shapes, and serpentine arcs dance across three or five rectangular segments. A grid of implicit diagonals cuts across the canvas to create a wave-like motion. Ms. Riley uses limited but harmonious color combinations that reference many of the painters she reveres, particularly Cézanne and Matisse.

The leaf-like shapes link the paintings to Ms. Riley’s love of nature and bring to mind a breeze vibrating the branches of trees or the sparkle of light bouncing across wind-whipped water. Pattern continues to play an important role in Ms. Riley’s work, but forms permutate to become fluidly dynamic, while the carefully planned structure ensures that the relationship between figure and ground remains ambiguous. The contrast of colors and lively pace of the patterning lends a lyrical quality to the work. For “Out There,” the colors pink, rose, grass green, and sky blue suggest springtime. But Ms. Riley’s interests are largely in the perceptual, rather than the allusive, experiences of color. And she has a particular focus on the impact of light on color. In “Painting with Verticals, Cadence 3,” bold areas of green and blue bounce off the lighter areas of pure white and pastel blue, creating the sensation of color bursting off the canvas. In “Painting with Verticals, Cadence 2,” the blue is deeper and the green is richer. A neutral almond color has replaced the white. The momentum is slower and the painting appears fuller and heavier.

As her titles suggest, Ms. Riley sees important affinities between music and her art. The monumental scale and horizontal format encourage the viewer to read the paintings left to right, but the narrative offered does not operate like a written text. Instead, Ms. Riley deploys color and shape to create symphonic confrontations and harmonies. For “Paintings with Verticals, Cadence 6,” Ms. Riley chose the intense hues of blues, reds, and purples. The curvilinear forms retain their sinewy strength even as they surge, swell, and heave across the canvas. What begins as a glimpse of fiery red at the far left of the canvas moves swiftly across the middle, gaining force, until it is finally gentled by a sea of lavenders and blues. The complex interactions evoke the experience of listening to a piece of music, one that engages and delightfully defies the listener’s expectation.

Also of interest are Ms. Riley’s preparatory studies. Ms. Riley has long used assistants to transfer her full-scale cartoons to canvas. The absence of the artist’s hand is in keeping with Ms. Riley’s commitment to content over creator. But in preparation for each work, Ms. Riley produces numerous drawings, collages, and gouaches. She begins with a single formal element, investigating its various potentials, and then expands her investigation to incorporate different elements, moving from form to color. It’s a deliberative, almost scientific method of inquiry. The gouaches on display, many linked to the development of Ms. Riley’s “Cadence” series, exemplify her discovery process for creating relationships among colors.

But because the gouaches are so similar to the paintings on display, albeit on a smaller scale, the experience of sameness tends to override the works’ fine conceptual underpinnings and subtle effects. Displaying studies that disclose some of the “mistakes” Ms. Riley acknowledges as part of the working processes might help to both humanize and disclose the intellectual rigor with which Ms. Riley approaches her art.

Until January 5 (534 W 25th St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, and 32 E 57th St. at Madison Avenue, 212-929-7000).