Art Basel: OVR 2021: Holly Coulis, Katy Cowan, Tomory Dodge, Sedrick Huckaby, Kristy Luck

For Art Basel: OVR 2021,  Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present new sculptures and paintings by Holly Coulis, Katy Cowan, Tomory Dodge, Sedrick Huckaby, and Kristy Luck. The fair will be accessible online February 9 - 12, 2022.

Holly Coulis's paintings operate as stages where still life scenes unfold. A table, for example, creates an initial structure where simplified, geometric forms are arranged and interact. There is a sense of order in these scenes - as if the fruits and dishes were laid out by some external force. Through layers of paint, linear elements are created, giving the illusion of colorful stripes or energy fields around individual objects. These works feel familiar, but upend our sense of figure/ground, horizon-line, perspective, and scale. Dynamic lines separate the objects and the bright color fields around them, engaging the respective areas of the painting like interlocking puzzle pieces. The objects in Coulis's paintings and the planes on which they sit have started to morph in Coulis’s work over the course of the last few years. She comments, "The work is getting more abstract, which initially wasn't something intentional. When I first started making these still life paintings, I never intended to push them into abstraction, it just slowly started to happen. Now, in the next body of work, I am starting to become most interested in the abstract elements, how the lines intersect and weave and the places that open up for color. Sometimes I even want to eliminate all recognizable form! I'm not in any rush to do that, but there is part of me that wants to see what would happen if they became completely abstracted.” "You can sense that something else might happen,” she says. "I create the language and then it feeds on itself. A number of possibilities open up a few directions (or not) and you have to just follow along. If you're a scientist, there's no end. There's no answer. You find an answer, and then you find another problem.”

Katy Cowan’s work investigates the terms of the art object, her identity as a maker and the site of creation itself. Cowan’s body, her studio tools, and the events in her immediate environment serve as generative subject-matter for her artworks. Cowan moves easily between media. “I am completely interested in breaking down barriers of categorization,” she states. Her transitions rely on a larger, systematic way of thinking that emphasizes alteration, repetition, and a conceptual emphasis on material choice. At the same time, Cowan’s work embraces an open attitude towards studio practice: “I love incorporating accidents into my work and learning to react to them, to build off of them.” Recent works reflect Northern California, where Cowan lives and works; they “show the shifting winds, the force of the Pacific Ocean on Northern California coastlines, the foggy calm of the evening sun burning through the atmosphere.” Poetry is another influence in Cowan’s work. As a visual artist, working in response to poetry, “takes time,” Cowan writes, “you have to step back, see your world in a new way, and let that change affect you.”

Tomory Dodge’s dynamic paintings explore representation and the mechanics of picture-making. He writes, “I have often talked about paintings being inherently contradictory things. They are objects that are spaces, walls that are windows. They are the intersection of object and image. Painting maintains a physical anchor at a time when the image generally is becoming more and more ethereal—everywhere and nowhere at the same time.” Painting’s power to represent images and events means that we often forget the fact that paintings themselves are a matrix of applied material signs. The vision of the painter and the subjects that they depict are figured through brushstroke, color and texture. Dodge comments, “Paradoxically, similar to analytic cubism perhaps, the attempt to understand something in its totality often results in partially obscuring it.” Within Dodge’s large oil-on-canvas paintings, many smaller “paintings” seem to jostle together, making room for themselves within the greater composition. The artist’s practice is both additive and reductive. He paints over older moments and scrapes away, finding the painting within the painting, to reach the final form of the work.

Everyday people are the essence of Sedrick Huckaby’s work. “Ordinary people matter,” he comments. Many of his subjects live in Ft. Worth, Texas, where he also makes his home. The work reminds us of art’s power as a communicative tool that engenders change by empowering an understanding of one’s own life, and those of the people around us. “The African-American family and its heritage has been the content of my work for several years,” Huckaby writes. “In large-scale portraits of family and friends I try to aggrandize ordinary people by painting them on a monumental scale.” Huckaby’s words and images ask us to think about our communities. They ask us to look hard at the people around us, to really see them, and to listen to the stories they have to tell. “I am most enthusiastic about painting from a live sitter. There is an incredible energy when painting directly from another person and I love the challenge. Sometimes there is conversation, and at other times silence–but always there is a feeling of sharing a small slice of life together. I hope these paintings not only celebrate the sitter’s facial features but also send the message that ordinary people, who may not be great in society’s eyes, should be of paramount importance to us.”

Kristy Luck’s paintings are windows into psychological spaces where forms emerge from fluid gestures and rich colors. Building upon sketches, her surreal landscapes evoke a subconscious understanding of space and objects. The titles give viewers a glimpse of her intentions and the imagery and patterns echo historical depictions of women in melancholic or revelatory states. "I think of it as revisiting the same place at a different time of day, or years later. The color, the emphasis, the images, all shift and change - like music,” Luck says. "Color as a narrative device can be incredibly elusive. Both the image and the emotional experience are guided by the color. It is nuanced and requires intimacy.” Luck includes motifs of erupting volcanoes, bursting blooms, and spinning tornadoes, all events that signal transformation. At the same time, these shapes are open so that viewers can also bring their own associations and readings of the scenes. “I want my surfaces to generously reveal their making to the viewer in visible, built-up layers and repeated patterns. At the same time, I let the forms in the image slip out of grasp to evoke personal or private mystery.” Inspired by artists and writers like Carol Rama and Clarice Lispector, Kristy Luck's work addresses sensuality, imagination and memory. We experience these spaces as if in a dream: "Part of how I gauge when a piece is finished is that there is no pre-dominant read." There is a sense of presence in these works, but also one of absence, a feeling of things coming together, and breaking apart.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES