“The maternal bodily experience Hollowell’s paintings most directly evoke cannot, by the limits of biology, be universal. But in their phenomenological effects, their demand for an active mode of perception in which see-er and seen merge, the paintings presuppose and reaffirm the individual bodies through which any viewer feels and experiences the world.”
Hypnotic, beguiling and otherworldly, Loie Hollowell’s Full Frontal (Purple, Blue and Red) from 2017 verges on the uncanny; abstract and yet resolutely bodily, the realization of the canvas’ abstraction quietly fades. By distilling human forms into a mesmerizing vocabulary of curved shapes, Hollowell’s canvases are simultaneously seductive and sacred. “It’s not abstraction with a big ‘A,’” the artist notes. “But even the most abstract things have some reference. So I view my works as body landscapes through the language of minimizing forms to a more symbolic space” (Loie Hollowell quoted in: Mariana Fernandez, “Loie Hollowell’s Sensuous, Suggestive Paintings Provoke and Delight,” Flaunt Magazine, Iss. 155, 2017 (online)). Stemming from her physical and psychological experiences with sexuality, fertility, and childbirth, Hollowell’s practice is characterized by vibrating gradients that expand, contract, and converge.
Market Precedent: Loie Hollowell
While her output is largely autobiographical in nature, the artist draws upon the lineage of her female predecessors. In response to Hollowell’s first exhibition, critic Genevieve Allison lauded: “Her unflinchingly direct paintings sublimate aspects of the female experience in compositions that are both landscapes and anatomical abstractions, echoing a long tradition of feminist painters who claimed the female body for their gender’s own demesne. Synthesizing Judy Chicago’s hard-edge symbolism, Hilma af Klint’s diagrammatic visual language, and Georgia O’Keeffe’s sense of the iconographic, the fourteen paintings presented in Hollowell’s first exhibition here are powerfully referential of her forebears.'' (Genevieve Allison, “Critics’ Picks New York: Loie Hollowell”, Artforum, 27 October 2016 (online)) A Northern California-born, New York-based artist, Hollowell also pulls from the Californian Light and Space movement of the 1960s and 70s to inform her application of light and shadow as a source of undulating rhythm, extending beyond the canvas and into the viewer’s space. Though deeply enmeshed in the discipline of such artists and movements, Hollowell possesses a highly singular visual language that is universal in its aesthetic sensibilities and bold vulnerability.
Deceptively simple in its elegant eroticism and geometric language, the substrate of Full Frontal (Purple, Blue and Red) is made of sculpted high-density foam, then glued to a linen-covered panel, sealed with acrylic, and painted with a mixture of oil and sawdust. Hollowell always begins by mapping her framework through drawing: “I do a bunch of really quick sketches and doodles in my little nightt.mes journal,” she explains. “That will develop into a drawing that I will make on Bristol paper and if I really like it I will grid it out and grid that out onto the canvas.” (Loie Hollowell quoted in: Rob Kaiser-Schatzlein, “Interview: Loie Hollowell in Sunnyside,” Two Coats of Paint, 23 September 2015 (online)) Over the course of weeks that turn into months, the artist employs fan brushes, sponges, and palette knives to achieve intricate gradients and delicate laceworks of pigment. Like a relief sculpture, the present work represents the culmination of meticulous skill and a scientific application of material, with every inch scrutinized to sublime perfection. The finished work is a canvas imbued with fierce physicality–an effect heightened by its near human scale. Measuring to a towering height of 72 inches, Hollowell maps a cartography of psychic space, with her own frame dwarfed in comparison to the canvas.
"I view my works as body landscapes through the language of minimizing forms to a more symbolic space."
In the present work, a tonal, convex shape pulsates a gradient of electric blues, radiating a visceral energy that draws the viewer’s gaze directly into the heart of the canvas. A personal lexicon of symbolic forms, Hollowell derives her geometry from religious iconography and architecture: “these include the mandorla, a pointed oval form that is used both over doorways and to enclose the figures of Mary and Christ in medieval art; the ogee, a distinctive S-shaped curve; and the lingam, a phallus worshipped as the symbol of Shiva.” (Hutch Wilco, “Loie Hollowell’s Shanghai Recalibration'', Ocula Magazine, 26 May 2021 (online)) As exemplified in the present work, Hollowell’s unique visual language of gentle fleshy curves, orbs and mandorlas create powerful, talismanic images. By ascribings cosmic resonance to intimate experiences, Hollowell arouses emotions inextricably tied to the carnal nature of human beings: “Beauty for me is not just visual, it is also experimental. I want the viewer to come away not necessarily knowing what I was trying to tell them about, say, my birth experience, but absorbings an impression of brightness or richness or radiance that has something to do with their relationship to their own body.” (Loie Hollowell quoted in: New York, Pace Gallery, Plumb Line, 2019 (press release))
Through the formal exploration of erotic liberation and the female experience, Loie Hollowell presents an aesthetic of pleasure without pain. In describings the new-age unity emitting from Hollowell’s canvases, critic Elizabeth Buhe notes: “The maternal bodily experience Hollowell’s paintings most directly evoke cannot, by the limits of biology, be universal. But in their phenomenological effects, their demand for an active mode of perception in which see-er and seen merge, the paintings presuppose and reaffirm the individual bodies through which any viewer feels and experiences the world.” (Elizabeth Buhe, “Loie Hollowell: Plumb Line”, The Brooklyn Rail, 2019 (online)) Full Frontal (Purple, Blue and Red) is a preeminent example of Hollowell’s masterful ability to synthesize light, color, and form into a poignant exploration of the bodily landscape.
