NYAB Event - Lia Halloran "The Only Way Out Is Through"

Lia Halloran "The Only Way Out Is Through"

DCKT Contemporary

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The exhibition includes new paintings of crystal caves and personified icebergs, along with ink on vellum works. HALLORAN uses science and the natural world to map out physical and psychological spaces in her painting and addresses time in ways that stretch our notions of perception. Halloran’s paintings of crystal caves explore a submerged space that is finite and bounded. The paintings accentuate the unreal quality of crystal formations and the claustrophobic environments of caves. A sense of disorientation merges with the inanimate and the imagery examines discernable entropy and decay. The environments are impossible and chaotic; the spaces are both beautiful and terrifying. The works are based on last decade’s discovery of the Cueva de los Cristales in Naica, Mexico where monumental selenite crystals reaching over thirty-five feet long look more like architectural beams than mineral growth. Halloran’s paintings of personified icebergs embody rapidly shifting and transforming existence. The icebergs become a metaphor of the complexities of personal intimacy and separation. The work illuminates ideas of surface and transparency and offers the opportunity to view many layers simultaneously. There is an assertion and self- reflective quality in the paint handling, where movement and crystallization of the paint references the larger structure of the iceberg.

[Image: Lia Halloran "The Only Way Out Is Through" (2009) oil on canvas wrapped wood panel 72 x 96 in.]