About
In the current solo exhibition at the Mazlish Gallery, the soulful paintings of Loy Luo evoke timeless songs with unknown origins and infinite possibilities. The abstract artworks have the depth and strength of stone combined with the lightness of air and space. Luo not only encourages her audience to look but also to listen and move in place as they view her art. The musicality comes from Luo’s background as a musician and her notations that are painted on the canvas recount ancient songs of friendship and love. To fully experience the evershifting color, depth and space, the viewer is compelled to move from left to right and from up to down in order to grasp the dimensions described by the powerful presence of each artwork.
All of Luo’s artworks present a vast, borderless space. In this floating, gravity-free world, Luo paints intangibles with such conviction that these abstractions are made manifest. With precise, deliberate brush marks, Luo creates an alchemic surface that changes according to the ambient light. In Half Diamond Sutra, the mineral green of the ground unites the suspended marks and objects as well as the calligraphic notations scratched into the patina. In Abstract Theater A8, the sense of the self suspended in the experience of gazing towards a rosy light peppered with floating forms that are at once bird-like yet solid. The vertigo created by this tilting space is caused by a depth of field that seems to accelerate with the passage of time. In the Rune series, the sensation of different spaces is more direct: in Rune 2, the painting evokes the sunlight through trees as one gazes upwards and in the painting Rune 3, the atmospheric blue places the viewer adrift in a celestial orb.
This cartographic quality continues through to the Heart Sutra series. In these paintings, there are luminous pigments lurking beneath a calming overlay of earth colors. It is in the incising of the paint through this glowing patina that Loy Luo reveals the depth of the painting’s journey. Calligraphic symbols rain down the canvases in a constant torrent of memories evoking stories, songs and poems. Some artworks, such as Heart Sutra I, go so far as to play with the light. As the viewer moves in front of the painting, the colors shift magically from black to gold and back to black. This optical illusion reveals and obscures its own meaning, cajoling the viewer to come close and then to step away in a continual “back and forth” sensation. It is only by remaining engaged with the artworks over time does the understanding of the inscribed words, the space and the shifting colors become clear.
The most recent series of artworks, Guqin, refer to the horizontal slide guitar native to China with which Loy Luo performs her music. In Guqin I and II, Luo writes the notes of a traditional folk song on a white field. Sometimes the notes are cut off abruptly by a jagged sanguine border like an ancient wound that refuses to heal. In both paintings, the texts seem to have been incised into white marble that is at once solid yet poised to vaporize like a cloud- just as the memory of music disappears just after it is performed.
The uniting force behind all of Loy Luo’s artworks is the immense strength and space she describes with her large and smaller abstract paintings. The alternating erasure and endurance of her mark making, the piercing luminosity of her colors and the power of implied telluric currents are all infused by Luo with a lightness of being. The inscriptions are manifested thoughts that rain down in the mind of the viewer like a half-forgotten melody as the artist presents an ancient tale, patinated with age and its accompanying palimpsests, conveying timeless instructions on how to love and live.
- Jen Dragon
Loy Luo_Secrets _2023_Mazlish Gallery_Onsite
On Site
Artist Statement
LoyLuo_Heart Sutra 2_2023_60x72in
The Secret of Palimpsest
When early humans first carved and painted on the walls of caves, they did not use written symbols to represent letters or words. Their art therefore did not distinguish between writing and painting, and we cannot discern whether these early artists intended to state a thought, express emotion or perhaps achieve some other purpose. When we try to “read” these ancient images, we cannot be sure whether to approach them as art or texts.
Millennia later, and in the aftermath of modernism, artists may employ multifaceted and multimedia approaches to their work, yielding a kind of palimpsest, layering symbolic and visual imagery to convey specific experiences, impressions and expressions of the artists’ lives.
My “Palimpsest” series recovers some of the literal meaning of “writing”: here I focus on exploring the visual integration and transformation of written texts. On the one hand, the creative inspiration comes from the recognition of the visual nature of traditional Chinese calligraphy, and on the other hand, it draws on the visual transformation of textual elements in contemporary art. I introduce both textual visualizations with different backgrounds and motivations. Traditional calligraphy, as the initial visual application of words, is limited and dependent on the readability of words. The text references in modern collage make the readability and visuality of the text more diverse and vivid. It particularly highlights the ambiguity, polysemy, imagery, and symbolism of text, and combines various visual means to achieve creative intentions.
"Palimpsest" works employ the more familiar texts adopted from the "Book of Songs[JP1] " and the "Buddhist Sutra," as well as less familiar works, such as centuries-old scores of music played on the guqin, an ancient Chinese string instrument. However, when I use these texts, I do not expect them to be read normally, but rather to provide a kind of atmosphere that is visible but of uncertain meaning. To this end, I use installation, reliefs, inversions, coverings and other means to obscure normal reading, rendering them readable in some respects and unreadable in others. Perhaps only by immersing yourself in such ambiguity can you reach a little bit of the impossible truth.
Works in the Show
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Loy Luo is a Chinese artist living in New York. She holds a master's degree from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology and has taught at the Beijing Institute of Business Administration. As the Loy Luo space owner, Luo created the concept of "Open Theater". In her space in the Tribeca gallery district, she continuously displays exhibitions of different themes with a frequency and appearance similar to post-industrial production. While maintaining the quality of art, the space is open to artists of various backgrounds, experiences, and achievements as much as possible to explore the depth and diversity of the selected themes. In recent years, Luo's core creative concept has been Action Art. First, she believes that concepts cannot remain at the level of slogans but should be implemented and presented through concrete actions. For example, she shares her art space with artists and implements the slogans "15 minutes of fame" and "Everyone is an artist" in the form of thematic exhibitions; compared with those politically colored slogans, she concludes the exploration of art itself: not only famous artists can create excellent works, and not only good artists can create good works. This is also the underlying logic of her emphasis on the works of artists at all levels and her efforts to provide equal opportunities for communication and display. Secondly, the concept of her action art integrates factors such as time, space, people, and ideas, greatly expanding the boundaries of previous action art and integrated media art, and is more holistic and constructive than the former two. For example, the works "The Other I" and "Homeless" that explored identity at the beginning of the pandemic are not just framed exhibits but cover the artist's specific living state, creative motivation, time, process, communication, exhibition, dialogue and space conversion.During her passive stay in New York in the middle of the pandemic, the works involving cultural introspection that lasted for two years: such as "Window", "Eyes", and "Palimpsest", extended the material window of art to the historical and cultural dimension outside the window; with the adaptation and deepening of New York life, the artist's experience in the use of space and in-depth research on abstract art creation stimulated the evolution of the "Abstract Theater" series of works; Finally, driven by factors such as the reflection on contemporary art ecology, the advent of a large macro-comprehensive action art work called "Open Theater" was prompted. Before coming to the United States, Luo's artistic creations were mainly paintings and sculptures. Her art is known for its rich layers, restrained energy, and profound thoughts. Her works have been exhibited or collected in China, Italy, France, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, and others. www.loyluo.art
Loy Luo in her Beijing studio 2017
