Laurel Holloman-Deep Dive exhibition | 20-31 July 2022
from 11 am to 6 pm
Bankside Gallery | 48 Hopton St, London SE1 9JH
London | Bankside Gallery
In this new series, Holloman continues to blur the line between abstraction and figurative work by using large bold brushstrokes combined with delicate precisely placed more minor strokes.
This is her second solo exhibition at the Bankside Gallery (London), Laurel Holloman takes a deep dive into the exploration of water and land and our relationship and connection to the earth.
With her distinct use of color and movement, Holloman maintains her signature style by creating two-dimensional depth in her pieces, displaying muted darker tones that recede into the painting and lighter tones that pop and dance on the canvas’s surface
Holloman continues to blur the line between abstraction and figurative work by using large bold brushstrokes combined with delicate precisely placed more minor strokes. This a show not to be missed with paintings of various sizes loaded with emotion.
The Deep Dive exhibition is co-produced by Claudine Gil Gallery .
Claudine Gil is an innovative contemporary art gallery present beyond the walls. The gallery bases its program partnerships with selectively chosen female artists. Their chosen mediums are as varied as painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and photography. Exhibitions are produced exclusively in specific locations chosen by the artist themselves or in collaboration with public institutions.
With this format rather than a traditional permanent on-site gallery or in the framed context of art fairs, the artist can occupy and use the space that best suits them to freely advance their personal artistic journey.
About Laurel Holloman:
Laurel is known for her vibrant use of color and larger-than-life paintings capable of capturing tumultuous emotions with a vivid movement that creates a three-dimensional illusion.
“I feel my paintings have a secret language born out of science and my obsessiveness with why and how we are here. I paint through abstraction with subtle hints of elemental imagery; the sky, water, fire, earth, a bird flying, cells reproducing, or a celestial bed of stars. I am obsessed with metallics and textures and use playful brushstrokes that give the paintings the third dimension and explore emotion,” she reveals.
Ever since her debut in 2010 with her New York studio collection, TriBeCa, Holloman has firmly established her artistic presence both domestically and abroad.
In April 2012, Coeur Libre was exhibited at the Pantheon Town Hall in Paris at the invitation of the mayor. This show was followed by Free Falling at The Ateneo Veneto and ran during the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. It was the first exhibition to contain large luminous murals. This exhibition was also the first collaboration between Holloman and Lea Mattarella, art history professor and art critic for La Repubblica, who curated the installation.
In spring 2013, All the World Inside featured 17 large-scale murals in three rooms at the Grand Palazzo Italia (Berlin). Also curated by Mattarella, this impressive collection furthered the artist’s visual and visceral discourse on universal elements and existentialism.
In the summer of 2013, Holloman’s painting Swell was picked for the group show, Nell’Acqua Capisco, at the Venice Art Biennale where it was chosen for the Biennale’s official catalog.
In July 2014, The Fifth Element was held in Paris at Galerie Joseph where it was met with the public increasingly drawn to the poetic emotion of Holloman’s work.
The 28 pieces visually reflect the four major tangible elements—Earth, Air, Water, and Fire—while the mysterious “fifth element” is represented in the emotion of each painting. In November 2015 in London, the artist presented The Innocents, a stunningly intimate series featuring portraits of women and children. In the summer of 2016, the Museum Jan in Amsterdam invited the artist for a solo exhibition.
In this show dealing with environmental issues, Holloman captures actual images of woods, plants, and animals in their damaged natural spaces. Reminiscent of stained glass, Everglow is an installation of 12 back-panel LEDs that serve as a commentary on our current global warming crisis. On Fertile Ground, (Bankside Gallery, London, July 2017), the artist continued to explore her favorite themes of nature, including the world of flora—from the tight abstracted micro images of flowers to posed portraits of the different stages of blooming.
In April 2018, Color Forest at the Luciana Matalon Foundation in Milan revealed several works referencing the style of large murals
Holloman created for All the World In and The Fifth Element. The link between these works is not only the stylistic choice but also the theme: the “liminal space or threshold” that is the border between life and death. From this sentiment also comes a section entitled Memory Paintings, in which layers of paint are superimposed with patinas of gold and silver to which pearlescent pigments and color are added. The result is iridescent works that—depending on the viewer’s point of view—represent “a sort of search of the imaginary that nevertheless fades too quickly”. Memory and Movement (Galerie Joseph- July 2019) showed pieces in which the theme of movement is expressed with swirling shapes flowing through the canvas and energetic brushstrokes whipping across rich shades of color. Certain images are deliberately blurred so the viewer must sit with each piece to perceive its meaning. Many of the larger pieces are paintings within paintings where Holloman has left the first layer peeking through the next by either blurring the final layer or scraping back to the first layer underneath it all. Holloman purposely juxtaposes the technical memory of the paint with her own conscious and unconscious memory. In 2020, The Art Squared Gallery, which promotes emerging and mid-career artists, selected 6 works from the Memory and Movement series. The pieces were exhibited on large-scale panels, as 8×8 ft high-definition digital images in the gallery outdoor venue located at Pershing Square, Downtown Los Angeles
Solo Exhibitions:
2022: Deep Dive, Bankside Gallery, London
2020: Art Squared Gallery featuring the artwork of Laurel Holloman,
Pershing Square, Los Angeles, USA
2019: Memory and Movement, Galerie Joseph, Paris, France
2018: Color Forest (duo exhibition with sculptor Susi Kramer)
Fondazione Luciana Matalon, Milan, Italy
2017: Fertile Ground, Bankside Gallery, London, UK
2016: Everglow, Museum Jan, Amstelveen, NL
2015: The Innocents, Menier Gallery, London, UK
2014: The Fifth Element, Galerie Joseph, Paris, France
2013: All the World Inside, Palazzo Italia, Berlin, Germany
2012: Free Falling, Ateneo of Venice, Venice, Italy
2012: Coeur Libre, Pantheon Town Hall, Paris, France
Group Exhibitions:
2018: Museum of Art- Biennale Chianciano (Italy)
2018: Water for Life, International Art Exhibition, Niagara Falls History Museum, Canada
2014, 2016, 2018: The Contemporary Art Biennale of Argentina, Centro Borges Museum, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2017: Museo Ateneo de Madrid, A Collection Art from Spain and the Americas, Madrid, Spain
2014: Spectrum Miami, Contemporary Arts Selection, Miami, Florida
2014: The Opera Gallery, Monaco, France
2013: The Venice Biennale, Nell’Acqua Capisco, San Marco Piazza, Venice, Italy
Awards:
1st Place in Painting, Contemporary Art Biennale of Argentina, 2014
Banco Ciudad Award Best Overall, Contemporary Art Biennale of Argentina, 2014
5th Place in Painting, Florence Biennale, 2015
1st Place, The International Federation of Art Critics, Chianciano Biennale, 2018
Laurel Holloman earned her Bachelor of Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, majoring in performance art and visual art. She continued her studies at UCLA and the British American Drama Academy in London alternating between theatre and visual art.
For more information, visit laurelholloman.net
For her second solo exhibition at the Bankside Gallery (London), Laurel Holloman takes a Deep Dive into the exploration of water and land and our relationship and connection to the earth.
Holloman reveals, “I like paintings that have hidden surprises in them. I like paintings that create a mood, but are still very simple in other ways. Maybe simple in palette or theme. I also like using glazes and pigment powders that show the underpinning beneath. I am always trying for a 3-dimensional effect. I want movement in the pieces, so I also use a slicing technique to create dimension. I like to swirl images and wrap them against each other, so they are having a relationship to the canvas. I would say “Rebirth” is more of a mood painting, but symbolizes the sea.”
“I think each piece has a violent and sometimes a Dr. Seuss-type energy. I purposely did not want any of the floral images to be too pretty or to be based on reality. I wanted them to have oddness and a language fighting against each other. I wanted the figures in each square to be either in an argument with each other or flowing together. It was all very loose and wild and layered. Deep Dive is my silent rebellion to Fertile Ground, my first exhibition at the Bankside Gallery in 2017, which tested my skill set of color matching and detail.”
With works radiating passion and momentum, the viewers will be embarking on a special place in their memory described by the artist as
It could be floating in the sea, staring up at the sky lying in the tall grass as a child, or swimming through an ocean full of seaweed. I want to convey a feeling or energy without putting a direct stamp on it. I would say it is close to how you may smell something. It is blurred like in a dream. It could be more metaphorical like seeing movement or color that represents the emotion of love or hate or even chaos. I lean in more to images that reflect nature, but I do not shy away from color field paintings that may represent human emotion.
Deep Dive is co-produced by Little Monkey Productions (USA) and Claudine Gil Gallery
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