formerly: Rubber Factory
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Walking in Circles in the Night
Gwen Hollingsworth
January 10 – February 15, 2025
island is pleased to present Gwen Hollingsworth’s debut solo exhibition, Walking in Circles in the Night.
Informed by Daoism, a Chinese spiritual practice that emphasizes living in harmony with the natural world, Hollingsworth’s practice interprets gardens and landscapes as sacred sites, using abstraction to map psychological spaces while seeking sanctuary and self knowing. Through a painterly process of psycho-geographic world-building, Hollingsworth charts resonant surfaces in her paintings which dissolve recognizable physical markers in the world into a field of signs and symbols that slowly emerge. In “Relic”, floral silhouettes, claw-like gestures, and oscillating color relationships populate an ethereal scene, recalling the work of Yuan Dynasty painters and their inner landscapes. Painters such as Huang Gongwang (1269-1354) and their emphasis on refuting representation in favor of hazy, contemplative works which coalesced slowly before the viewer are antecedents for Hollingsworth’s practice. In a similar vein to how these painters used ink washes to generate tranquil atmospheric layers, Hollingsworth’s works begin with a dark underpainting, followed by sharpening contours while wiping away successive layers. This spontaneous, iterative process brings into focus dimly-lit nocturnal scenes and vaporous landscapes on the verge of recognition, gradually remembered by the viewer.
Hollingsworth uses the meditative spaces in the paintings to process her Chinese descent, feminine cosmological rituals and broader views on inescapable natural phenomena. “Ruminations” and “The Letter Blue” are the largest works in the exhibition, mirroring each other across the room in order to form a liminal space with their vast pulsing surfaces. Regeneration and decay, as embodied by Yin, the Chinese cosmological term for the feminine essence, are important references for the work, manifesting in root-like forms or devotional depictions of the earth. Hollingsworth imbues the work with this Yin; soft, flowing, teeming with life-giving potential, creating a temporal space rooted in the future yet experienced in the present.
Gwen Hollingsworth (b. 1998, Los Angeles, CA) uses painting to highlight the psychology of space and its impact on our personal realities in an effort to create new visual and spiritual paradigms. Her practice explores phenomena in the natural world, emphasizing landscapes as sacred sites, as a way of seeking sanctuary and self knowing. Her work has been exhibited at Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles; Roberts Projects, Los Angeles; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; Swivel Gallery, Saugerties, New York; The Shophouse, Hong Kong; South Willard, Los Angeles, among others. She received her BA from UCLA in 2020. She is a current resident at Silver Art Projects in New York City.
Informed by Daoism, a Chinese spiritual practice that emphasizes living in harmony with the natural world, Hollingsworth’s practice interprets gardens and landscapes as sacred sites, using abstraction to map psychological spaces while seeking sanctuary and self knowing. Through a painterly process of psycho-geographic world-building, Hollingsworth charts resonant surfaces in her paintings which dissolve recognizable physical markers in the world into a field of signs and symbols that slowly emerge. In “Relic”, floral silhouettes, claw-like gestures, and oscillating color relationships populate an ethereal scene, recalling the work of Yuan Dynasty painters and their inner landscapes. Painters such as Huang Gongwang (1269-1354) and their emphasis on refuting representation in favor of hazy, contemplative works which coalesced slowly before the viewer are antecedents for Hollingsworth’s practice. In a similar vein to how these painters used ink washes to generate tranquil atmospheric layers, Hollingsworth’s works begin with a dark underpainting, followed by sharpening contours while wiping away successive layers. This spontaneous, iterative process brings into focus dimly-lit nocturnal scenes and vaporous landscapes on the verge of recognition, gradually remembered by the viewer.
Hollingsworth uses the meditative spaces in the paintings to process her Chinese descent, feminine cosmological rituals and broader views on inescapable natural phenomena. “Ruminations” and “The Letter Blue” are the largest works in the exhibition, mirroring each other across the room in order to form a liminal space with their vast pulsing surfaces. Regeneration and decay, as embodied by Yin, the Chinese cosmological term for the feminine essence, are important references for the work, manifesting in root-like forms or devotional depictions of the earth. Hollingsworth imbues the work with this Yin; soft, flowing, teeming with life-giving potential, creating a temporal space rooted in the future yet experienced in the present.
Gwen Hollingsworth (b. 1998, Los Angeles, CA) uses painting to highlight the psychology of space and its impact on our personal realities in an effort to create new visual and spiritual paradigms. Her practice explores phenomena in the natural world, emphasizing landscapes as sacred sites, as a way of seeking sanctuary and self knowing. Her work has been exhibited at Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles; Roberts Projects, Los Angeles; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; Swivel Gallery, Saugerties, New York; The Shophouse, Hong Kong; South Willard, Los Angeles, among others. She received her BA from UCLA in 2020. She is a current resident at Silver Art Projects in New York City.