“Lucy Bull’s landscapes read like tuned-up Impressionism with shades of Mark Bradford. Or maybe late Monet lily pads on acid... [they] hiss and vibrate like Bridget Riley stripes on a hot sidewalk. They dominate the room with ferocious joy.”
A kaleidoscopic maelstrom of chroma and texture, Lucy Bull’s Flash Chamber (2020) unravels in the transcendental finesse of the young artist’s painterly hand, presenting an indelibly visceral sight that fluctuates between a surrealist dream, a synesthetic painterly composition, and a psychedelic experience. Ripples of magenta, yellow, and green simultaneously coalesce and collapse into an atmospheric abyss of colour and form. This disorienting yet serene landscape seemingly dissolves t.mes and space to offer a sublime meditation for the senses, a phenomenally immersive experience in a culture saturated with otherwise fleeting images and trends. Recently debuting with her first solo New York gallery exhibition in 2022 at David Kordansky, the young LA-based artist has distinguished herself as a contemporary paragon of abstract art, captivating audiences with a cosmic oeuvre of paintings, each of which crystallises a new glimpse into the illusory and unconscious unknown.
“I want to titillate the senses. I want to draw people closer. I think people aren’t used to paying much prolonged attention to paintings on walls, and I want to allow people to have more of a sensory experience. I want to draw them in so that there is the opportunity for things to open up and for them to wander.”
Bull’s enigmatic paintings balance the chromatic vibrancy of colour field paintings by the likes of Alma Thomas, Helen Frankenthaler, or Sam Gilliam with gestural markings that recall the Surrealist landscapes of Max Ernst, who developed the technique of grattage to record the grain of textured objects between layers of paint. Embodying the fundamental Surrealist interest in unlocking new subconscious potentialities, Bull’s ethereal paintings stimulate a delicate wavering between conscious and unconscious thought in the viewer. This visceral experience offers a mirror into Bull’s own process, which balances both calculation and impulse as the artist works to tease out fragments of forms from the abstract layers of her loose brushwork. With its amorphous collision of colour and form, Flash Chamber brilliantly exemplifies the mysticism of Lucy Bull’s distinctly contemporary practice as it draws the viewer into a cosmic illusion of painterly transfiguration. Tessellations of scratched markings give way to underlying layers of paint, which Bull accumulates in daubed and gauzy veils; meanwhile, streaming gradations of colour seamlessly flow into each other, allowing pink and red smears to bleed into scattered yellow smudges. By harmoniously teetering between the material realities of its pigment and surface and the subjective experiences it elicits, Flash Chamber accesses the sensitive liminality between conscious and subconscious states of being.
「露西．布爾的風景畫猶如經過調節的印象派作品，帶有馬克．布拉福德的色彩，又或莫內晚期的迷幻浮華荷花池塘……［它們］一如布麗奇・萊利的條紋，在炙熱的人行道上嘶嘶作響，盈盈顫動，憑藉狂熱的喜悅支配整個空間。」
年 輕藝術家露西・布爾《雅室》（2020年作）的色彩和質感碰撞交集，掀起如萬花筒般的巨大旋渦，以玄妙超凡的細膩筆觸，呈現介乎超現實夢境、聯覺構圖與迷幻體驗之間的內在風景，令人難以忘懷。紫紅、澄黃與青綠的波紋擴散融和，同時陷入色彩與圖案的神秘深淵，這片景象既令人迷惑，又靜謐安寧，彷彿溶化時空，營造令人讚嘆的感官冥想空間，在充斥瞬息萬變的圖像與潮流的文化中，提供撼動人心的沉浸式體驗。居於洛杉磯的露西．布爾在2022年於紐約大衛・康丹斯基畫廊舉辦首個個展，確立其當代抽象藝術典範的地位。她以浩瀚壯麗的畫作風靡觀眾，而每幅作品皆凝聚虛幻飄渺的無意識氣氛，讓觀者得以窺探未知世界。
布爾的畫作富有神秘感與平衡感，既採用阿爾瑪・托馬斯、海倫・弗蘭肯塔勒和山姆・吉利安等藝術家的色調和手勢標記所呈現的活潑繽紛色彩，亦體現超現實主義藝術家筆下風景畫的動態線條，令人聯想到馬克斯・恩斯特，他發明刮擦技巧記錄層層顏料之間的紋理質感。布爾的畫作如夢似幻，洋溢超現實主義藝術家的熱情，意圖開拓潛意識大門後的無限嶄新可能，刺激觀者於顯意識與潛意識之間微妙游移。這種深入靈魂的體驗彷如鏡子，反映布爾自身的創作過程，藝術家輕輕揮動隨性筆觸，層層建構抽象畫面，再梳理鬆散的輪廓碎片，平衡精準思慮與衝動激情。顏色與圖案的碰撞，凸顯藝術家採用的當代主義繪畫技巧的神祕感，她塑造的扭曲型態，更將觀者帶進猶如浩瀚宇宙的幻境。佈滿整幅亞麻布的刮痕揭露了底下或厚或薄的顏料，畫作表面亦有不少油彩蜿蜒而下，與其他顏料交叉縱橫，粉紅與紅色的油彩流進斑駁的澄黃色塊中，交匯相融，形成另一種顏色。《雅室》在畫作顏料的物質現實與藝術意境的主觀體驗之間，開闢巧妙的和諧境界，直達存在於顯意識與無意識狀態之間的敏感混沌地帶。