How many have you have jumped into a pool, or wading into the sea, and let your head lie right at the point of your face is half underwater and half above the line? There is a sensation of breathing the air above the water and having your body submerged. It's like a superpower, a feeling of nature and human identity, a weight and weightlessness at the exact same moment. Elizabeth Glaessner has looked at waterlines for many years now. The characters feel both freed and stuck in an in-between: conscious and subconscious in the same instant. For her newest solo show, Now you're a lake, opening at François Ghebaly in Los Angeles, being submerged in the strange and wonderful power of water, not sucumbbing but reverential.
One the strengths of this work is that in almost every painting, is there is a reflection, a subtle hint of another self, whether looking at the water or swimming near. It made me think, besides the classical representations these works evoke, is how we feel in the water itself. How we become another being, we move in different ways than we do on the surface of Earth, that our bodies take on a new meaning and new definition of how we move through space. Glaessner's characters are like in that moment where they transform from human to something prehistoric, and it's exhilarating to see. —Evan Pricco
