Loie Hollowell "Plumb Line"

Abstracting the human figure, Hollowell’s work explores the dualities of light, volume and scale, blurring the lines between the illusory and the real.

The artist’s premiere exhibition with Pace in New York will take place in the new building’s second floor gallery. The exhibition will showcase a series of new large-scale paintings that continue Hollowell’s investigation of bodily landscapes and sacred iconography through allusions to the human form. Drawing inspiration from artists like Agnes Pelton, Georgia O’Keefe, and Judy Chicago, Hollowell’s works abstract the most intimate parts of the human body into primal shapes, such as the mandorla and the lingam, in an examination of sexuality, conception, birth, and motherhood. In each work, the artist utilizes color and dimensionality—at times manipulating the canvas with three-dimensional forms—to amplify the phenomenological presence of her corporeal compositions.

“Beauty for me is not just visual, it is also experiential. 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.” - Loie Hollowell

Words and images via Pace Gallery.