Loie Hollowell at Pace

Titled Overview Effect (the effect of viewing Earth from space), Loie Hollowell‘s new exhibition at Pace Gallery plays with scale edits at extremes. In the main gallery, huge paintings tower through the space (her largest works to date). Each one features two circular forms, one concave and the other convex — protruding outward from the canvas — to create a dynamic play with space and shadow. The limited color palette of these works focuses on primaries and their combinations: arcs of muted colors radiate out from the central and boldly colored circles to create a painted effect that mimics optical plays with light and shadow. Hints of rainbows appear across the color spectrum, as if a lens flare. 

In the second gallery, smaller works (the artist’s smallest to date) also play with painting’s ability to create optical illusions. A small form protrudes from each of the small monochrome works that hung in a long row across the wall in a rainbow color progression. Radiating down from each protrusion is a harsh vertical color shift that splits each canvas down the middle to create an optical dimensionality. On closer inspection, the protruded form in each work is in fact, a nipple, each one cast from a various breast-feeding friend of the artist. These abstract paintings suddenly snap into view as portraits of a variety of women, each engaged in the bodily, raw, and intimate act of child-rearing. 

In this lens, the larger works in the first gallery could be viewed as bodily, the circles womb-like (the press release also connects the concentric ripples across the canvas to contractions during childbirth). In this way, Hallowell dually presents an abstract and visually arresting exhibition that celebrates motherhood, female community, and the immense capacity of the female body.

Photo: Loie Hollowell: Overview Effect, 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019 November 9, 2024–January 18, 2025. Photography courtesy Pace Gallery.