SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Jessica Silverman announced the representation of Loie Hollowell in partnership with Pace Gallery who has represented the artist since 2017.
Loie Hollowell is known for her paintings, drawings, and sculptural wall-works that explore the sensuality and spirituality of geometric abstraction and the human body. In dialogue with diverse historical traditions, Hollowell gestures towards artists such as light-and-space leader James Turrell, feminist pioneer Judy Chicago, mystical modernist Hilma af Klint, and neo-tantric painter G.R. Santosh. Combining her cosmic perspective on biological life with her aesthetic intelligence, Hollowell shifts our sense of time, space, and beauty.
Hollowell’s most recent body of work focuses on breasts as sources of love and otherworldly nourishment. Around the Clock (2022), for example, consists of twelve orbs cast from the breasts of the artist and two of her friends. Arranged in a circle against an existential void, the emblematic formation is reminiscent of flags – the twelve nation-stars of the European Union or the thirteen states of Betsy Ross’s original American banner. Marking territory as well as time, the 2x2 foot multimedia painting evokes a matriarchal region of deep space where warrior Amazons live in peace and harmony.
In 12, 4, 7 and 10, Hollowell creates a multidimensional Mother Earth, which doubles as a dividing cell or a fertilized ovum. The powerful image is also a version of the multi-breasted goddess, Artemis of Ephesus, whose grand temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. On a sociological level, the painting can be seen as defending breastfeeding in public and the equality of all bodies, whatever their gender, under the law, a.k.a. “Free the Nipple!” Indeed, the artist casts a wry eye on the labelling of babies assigned pink or blue at birth. 12, 4, 7 and 10 also chimes with references to our “galaxy,” which derives from “gala,” the Greek word for milk, and suggests the mythic origin of the Milky Way.
Hollowell was raised in California among hippie creatives that venerated art and nature. The daughter of a painting and drawing professor and a graphic designer-cum-political cartoonist, she was schooled from an early age in museum art and visual communication. After having an abortion in 2014, Hollowell turned her artistic attention to the pain and pleasure of embodiment. Later, in 2018 and 2020, she gave birth to and nursed two children, which again altered her world and work. Hollowell’s bas relief series include her Plumb Lines, Split Orbs, Belly Casts, Brain paintings, and more.
Jessica Silverman is honored to premiere, alongside University of California’s Manetti Shrem Museum, Hollowell’s cosmic mammary series. Jessica Silverman will be showing further work at Art Basel Miami Beach and will host a Hollowell solo show in San Francisco in 2024.
Loie Hollowell (b. 1983, Woodland, CA) has a BFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. Her work is included in many public collections including: Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; LACMA, Los Angeles; ICA, Miami; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunstmuseum Hague, the Netherlands; Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland; and M+ Museum, Hong Kong. She has been awarded: the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Award; the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts residency; and the Queens Art Fund Grant. Hollowell lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She is represented by Pace Gallery and Jessica Silverman. Her solo show at UC Davis’s Manetti Shrem Museum opens on September 25, 2022.
