Sometimes, an art exhibition that just unexpectedly knocks your socks off, one that unleashes elements so moving, ethereal, that you can't quite describe the feeling. Loie Hollowell's newest show, Plumb Line, on view at Pace Gallery in NYC through October 19 is a complete stunner. Abstract and compelling, the show pilots you into a time machine, where the colors and shapes recall Cubism and Futurism in ways that feel so fresh and unique.
"Beauty for me is not just visual, it is also experiential," Hollowell says. "I want the viewer to come away not necessarily knowing what I was trying to tell them about, say, my birth experience, but absorbing an impression of brightness or richness or radiance that has something to do with their relationship to their own body."
As Pace Gallery notes, "Central to Hollowell’s practice is her inquisitive approach to the human form and her ability to compose otherworldly landscapes that challenge the perception of space. Interested in Transcendental and Tantric painting, Hollowell creates work that is meditative in both process and form. Akin to artists like Hilma af Klint, Agnes Pelton and Tantric painter Gulam Rasool Santosh, whose works embrace the conventions of modernist painting and abstraction to visualize transcendental experience, Hollowell’s paintings also implore a spiritual energy. Through the use of symmetry, color and abstract iconography, Hollowell maps a cartography of psychic space, depicting the essence of the female form unapologetically, sensually and openly."
