Loie Hollowell: Sacred Contract
K枚nig Galerie is pleased to present Sacred Contract, the first solo exhibition with works by Loie Hollowell, in the Nave of St. Agnes.
Loie Hollowell, 38, has been described as a modern-day Georgia O鈥橩eeffe but with a dash of humor and a strong dose of female self-assertion. Originally from California, Hollowell has been living in New York City for many years. Here, she has continuously worked to redefine a representation of the human shape and experience. Her vibrantly coloured canvases set their focus on the core subjects of life: relationships, sexuality and femininity. While melding sculpture and painting through a combination of symmetrical forms and sculpted applications, Hollowell's paintings offer abstractions of the human body that speak of extreme vitality. In her most recent work, the artist set out to focus on a quintessentially female experience: giving birth.
In Sacred Contract, Hollowell鈥檚 art becomes a journey into the epicenter of pain. On nine large-scale canvases, called Split orbs, the artist translates the physical experience of labor into color and form. As you wander about the space, the canvases should alternate: light and dark 鈥 contraction and relaxation. The artwork approaches a color-phenomenological metaphor for the birth process. 鈥淚 see the distances between the canvases as a kind of meditation. You step from one to the other, from one contraction to the next,鈥 says the artist. The soft, smooth and velvety textures of the canvases find a counterpart in the rough spots which repeatedly appear at the core of the paintings. Here Hollowell also picks up on the texture of the surroundings, the b茅ton brut with which the former church of St. Agnes of the K枚nig Galerie was built in the post-war years.
In keeping with Walter Benjamin鈥檚 theory of art, something of an aura can be witnessed in the work of Loie Hollowell. Her works capture what cannot be described in language. They have something otherworldly, transcendent; they take us to a cosmos of universal knowledge and deep introspection. There鈥檚 the quiet echo of those traumatic hours in the exhibition space, the echoes of the origins of life and the beauty therein.
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K枚nig Galerie is pleased to present Sacred Contract, the first solo exhibition with works by Loie Hollowell, in the Nave of St. Agnes.
Loie Hollowell, 38, has been described as a modern-day Georgia O鈥橩eeffe but with a dash of humor and a strong dose of female self-assertion. Originally from California, Hollowell has been living in New York City for many years. Here, she has continuously worked to redefine a representation of the human shape and experience. Her vibrantly coloured canvases set their focus on the core subjects of life: relationships, sexuality and femininity. While melding sculpture and painting through a combination of symmetrical forms and sculpted applications, Hollowell's paintings offer abstractions of the human body that speak of extreme vitality. In her most recent work, the artist set out to focus on a quintessentially female experience: giving birth.
In Sacred Contract, Hollowell鈥檚 art becomes a journey into the epicenter of pain. On nine large-scale canvases, called Split orbs, the artist translates the physical experience of labor into color and form. As you wander about the space, the canvases should alternate: light and dark 鈥 contraction and relaxation. The artwork approaches a color-phenomenological metaphor for the birth process. 鈥淚 see the distances between the canvases as a kind of meditation. You step from one to the other, from one contraction to the next,鈥 says the artist. The soft, smooth and velvety textures of the canvases find a counterpart in the rough spots which repeatedly appear at the core of the paintings. Here Hollowell also picks up on the texture of the surroundings, the b茅ton brut with which the former church of St. Agnes of the K枚nig Galerie was built in the post-war years.
In keeping with Walter Benjamin鈥檚 theory of art, something of an aura can be witnessed in the work of Loie Hollowell. Her works capture what cannot be described in language. They have something otherworldly, transcendent; they take us to a cosmos of universal knowledge and deep introspection. There鈥檚 the quiet echo of those traumatic hours in the exhibition space, the echoes of the origins of life and the beauty therein.
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