| The six figure paintings in the show at DCKT Contemporary explore my interest in the physical forces of nature and the possibilities of how these can interact with, intersect and fragment the body. My work reflects my love of physics and the phenomenon of these unseen natural forces around us. Natural phenomena such as light, motion, dissipation, centrifugal forces, gravity and magnetism are the source material for thinking and creating painterly abstraction that intersects and breaks apart or dissolves the figures in the paintings. |  |
The World is Bound with Secret Knots – Lia Halloran
The six figure paintings in the show at DCKT Contemporary explore my interest in the physical forces of nature and the possibilities of how these can interact with, intersect and fragment the body. My work reflects my love of physics and the phenomenon of these unseen natural forces around us. Natural phenomena such as light, motion, dissipation, centrifugal forces, gravity and magnetism are the source material for thinking and creating painterly abstraction that intersects and breaks apart or dissolves the figures in the paintings.
Laws of physics that are familiar and observable around us become players, which are just as important as the figures with which they interact. At certain points, the abstraction of forces overcomes the figures, breaking down or mutating them. The figures lie in this point of unresolve between giving in and becoming overtaken, which moves them into experience. The forces depart from the diagrammatic into experience as they interact with the body. The paintings explore these natural phenomena, existing within a level of familiarity, made intimate with an exaggeration of these forces.
The title of the show, “The World is Bound with Secret Knots,” is a reference to magnetism and connectivity, both physically as well and intimately. Taken from an exhibit at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, which explores the notion that everything; particles, solar systems, lovers and even friendships are ruled by this force of nature and that the “world is indeed, bound with secret knots.” The work explores the idea that the familiar forces around us play more intimate roles than simply providing us with a glue to the earth.
Notes: On Figures Interacting with the Forces
The paintings explore the idea of a familiarity in a loss-of-control experience of danger within an un-negotiable situation. I really like that idea. Although there is not a narrative to my work so that you know what has happened, nor what is going to happen next, there is a direction, an awareness, a fluency or welcoming of this impossible, uncharted situation. They are suggesting these moments within this experience with something that is normally all around us but that, all of a sudden, is either evasive or made physical for a moment and then disappears. For example, there are magnetic fields and gravity around us all the time, all of these invisible forces. On the cosmic level, how could these forces interact with the body as if they were the size of galaxies colliding? These forces, which are so visually illusive are like an invisible part of nature, and if they could be seen, I’m sure it would be like looking at the ocean, a landscape or a sunset.
My paintings, both figurative and abstract, are derived from feelings or ideas of intimacy. In my work, in order to be able to paint a figure, I have to know the model intimately. In many ways, the painted figures themselves come from the desire to represent something from a first-hand experience. I’m not interested in taking images of astronauts and painting them, nor am I interested in taking pictures of skateboarders and painting them. I’m creating my own personal myth. It’s not important that the viewer knows that the motion studies are from pictures of myself skateboarding. To think about this body of work in terms of skateboarding, I think it does the paintings a great disservice because it adds unnecessary social signifiers. Even the act of skateboarding is an arbitrary way in which I know these forces of intimacy; it only serves as a means for me to experience these forces. It’s a personal demonstration of taking them to the edge of the line, the edge of physical experience. It is an example of my personal relationship to the forces would be being on a skateboard, moving so fast in the bowl that I become overwhelmed by the phenomenon of centrifugal motion. The experience is that you could lose it at any moment. The paintings explore these frustrations of the physical world or body—the limitations of flesh that the mind can transcend.
Within that notion, my work encompasses ideas of death, dismemberment and separation from the flesh, and yet with succumbing celebration. They are familiar with being taken apart; the unknown is acceptable. The work is not about skateboarding, but instead about presenting a situation of intimacy with light. It is similar in the choice of the figures; imagining them, pulling them apart and deciding how they would experience a physical reaction or tension. The work speaks of both a love and a dismemberment of the body.
I think of my work not as representation of figures but much more as the idea of cause and effect. My interest lies in painting the forces, the moments of abstraction that take over the figure. My favorite part is the tension in the hand alongside the hoses that make it become like a beast, transforming the figure into something else. In the horizontal, large painting, hoses turn from utilitarian knots—hoses that bring air or substance into beautiful, elegant knots that then again refer back to magnetism.
The most exciting part of my work, for me, is when the abstractions and the phenomena take over the figure in a surprising and unexpected way—to come up with marks and inventions for a visual language that describes different, invisible physical phenomena. On one hand, the figure can be almost completely flayed around and, on the other side, there is calm and a still. I’m taking what we physically know (the figure) and replacing and compounding it with something we conceptually know (magnetism, light, etc.). Rather than just being strict representations of the figure itself, I consider the figures in my work as having to be in this environment in order to show this interaction. I’m not interested in just abstraction of paint. The surface quality is incredibly important and the paint has a body and flesh unto itself. At moments in my work, there are build-ups in surface and paint to suggest an array of qualities such as scabbing, decomposition, clumping. The smooth build up of gesso eliminates the tooth of the canvas and allows the paint the least amount of friction when pulled over the surface.
My abstract paintings are, in most senses, an experiment in color. Because color is so important to the work, a minimal amount of visual information is used to describe the spaces. I like to explore color on a large scale and to feel physically overwhelmed by it. The abstract paintings are secondary paintings, they are almost sketches for the larger figures. They are not as complicated as my other work and they create their own visual language. You can’t look at color or an abstract painting and say that it couldn’t or wouldn’t happen on a certain size or scale. They have their own secular fantasy world. The abstractions make up their own rules.
How do you paint light made physical interacting with and tearing up the body? There isn’t a visual history of that. In many ways, I’m inspired by the fragmentation of this phenomenon. Many of these works are inspired by Caravaggio’s use of light to not only dramatize a scene but as a rubric of what to exclude and include. In my work, by laying out a similar direction of visual hierarchy, there is so much information that can be left out and so the color and atmosphere is left open-ended. The work also takes direction from the Mannerists and the structure and architecture of the body, particularly the works of Porntormo. When I look at those figures, they are more architectonic than figurative. The formal aspects of the paintings, such as elongation and accentuation of the body, become architecture. Michelangelo’s Jonas is of particular interest, and the implied force pulling upward by the simple structure and vastness of the human form. The structure itself is the body, which then becomes a site of architecture and environment.
The body is a site for experience above any desire for representation.
