LAUNCH LA, Los Angeles
(NOVEMBER 14—DECEMBER 5, 2015)
With their reconfigured pudding-like puddles of blossoming color interlaced with psychedelic delectability, Marion Lane’s paintings are a sort of contemporary hybrid of the poured creations of Lynda Benglis and dazzling op-art innuendos – all accompanied by mysterious echoes of Aubrey Beardsley.
Lane’s latest series of mesmerizing paintings integrates hard-edge angles with the soft, round shapes the artist forms with poured paint and a process of layered appliqué. Mostly eschewing painting’s traditional tools and techniques, she has perfected an innovative approach to the acrylic medium, creating abstract imagery that suggests morphing organic shapes flavored with a soupçon of the surreal.
A recurring black and white theme can be seen in the largest work in the show, Untitled 5 (2015), a swirling sea of contrasting paint that was reproduced in wallpaper on some of the gallery walls. With their inventive composite forms superimposed on top of horizontal planes of color, other of the works vaguely suggested landscapes. The artist’s 2012 exhibit Adventures in Suntan Alley, depended more on the premise of landscape, setting or place. But these newer paintings stand on their own as paint-scapes, situated somewhere on the vibrant and limitless continuum of abstraction. They represent nothing except the whimsical visions conjured from Lane’s own imagination. Lane’s work manifests, in the purest sense, the aesthetically gratifying quality of a smooth surface supporting the dynamic interaction of form, shape and color.
Having visited Lane’s magical world, the viewer can now become a part of it, as her motifs have been transformed into a collection of wearable art—clothing, jewelry and clutches patterned in the artist’s signature eye-candy—which accompanies the exhibit.
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