Pace Gallery is pleased to present the first exhibition in Asia dedicated to the New York-based artist Loie Hollowell. On view March 27 through May 31, 2018 in Central Hong Kong’s Entertainment Building, Loie Hollowell: Switchback is the artist’s second exhibition with Pace Gallery worldwide, following her debut with the gallery in Palo Alto in fall 2017. The exhibition includes 9 new paintings and 9 new works on paper that continue Hollowell’s investigation of bodily landscapes and sacred iconography through allusions to the human form, and women’s bodies in particular. The opening will coincide with the week of Art Basel Hong Kongas well as with the inauguration of Pace’s second gallery in Hong Kong, located in the city’s new H Queen’s building and featuring a solo exhibition dedicated to Yoshitomo Nara.

Drawing inspiration from artists like Agnes Pelton, Georgia O’Keeffe and Judy Chicago, Hollowell’s works abstract the most intimate and sexually explicit parts of the human body into primal shapes that reoccur frequently throughout art history, such as the mandorla and the lingam. The use of these primal, familiar shapes, which originate from the body, instill her paintings and drawings with an intrinsically accessible nature. Each work exists as a pure, self-contained sexual object, and the works share a unifying theatrical and visually stimulating form.

For the installation in Hong Kong, Hollowell has selected paintings and drawings that share common color hues and will be installed in four groupings throughout the gallery. Before embarking on each of her paintings, Hollowell carefully works with pastels and graphite on paper to test out various combinations of color, shading, and forms. To create her paintings, she builds upon flat linen-covered panels by applying shapes carved from high-density foam that are then sealed with a mixture of sawdust and acrylic medium. Once these sculpted linen panels have reached a perfectly smooth, undulating surface, Hollowell begins to apply oil paint. Through the use of color, chiaroscuro and an ethereal sense of light and space, Hollowell creates images that play with ideas of foreground and background, figure and ground, and body and landscape.

“Loie Hollowell’s work shows an extraordinary depth for her youth and we are thrilled to present it for the first time in Asia during such a momentous week for Pace,” said Marc Glimcher, Pace Gallery President & CEO. “From her sold-out exhibition in Palo Alto to the incredible engagement with her work at international art fairs, from Miami to London to Mexico City, collectors from all over the world have responded with great enthusiasm to her work and we are excited to introduce it to audiences in Hong Kong and visitors from across the region.”

Loie Hollowell (b. 1983, Woodland, California) earned a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Originating in autobiography, her paintings explore themes of sexuality, often through abstractions of the human body and an emphasis on female forms. With strong colors, varied texture, and the symmetry of sacred geometry, her works evoke bodily landscapes and allude to iconography such as the almond-shaped mandorlas found in medieval religious painting. Hollowell was the recipient of a 2011 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Award. She lives and works in New York.

About the exhibition

Dates: Mar 27, 2018 – May 31, 2018

Venue: Pace Gallery, Hong Kong

Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery, for further information please visit www.pacegallery.com.