OVER THE RIDGES AND THROUGH THE PASSES
Almine Rech Paris is pleased to announce Over the Ridges and through the Passes. Gwen O’Neil’s exhibition presents a series of new paintings inspired by unique weather and light conditions endemic to southern California.
May 11 - June 14, 2024
Like many West Coast-based artists—notably those associated with the Light and Space movement such as Larry Bell, Mary Corse, and Dewain Valentine—O’Neil seeks to capture the combination of natural and artificial factors responsible for southern California’s dramatic environment. Acknowledging that the fiery sunsets and hazy glow associated with Los Angeles are largely the result of air pollution, O’Neil’s paintings are as foreboding as they are dazzling.
Channeling painters like Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, O’Neil composes her compositions out of individual daubs of paint. Placing different colors next to each other on the canvas, O’Neil creates hazy volumes that seem to pulsate as we fix on them. Up close, these abstractions, which she bases on natural forms ranging from the tiny spirals inside seashells to massive murmurations of birds, break down into individual marks, like a digital photograph disintegrating into pixels.
Unexpected dashes of hot pink or chartreuse, for example, disrupt the illusion of distance or volume. The effect recalls similarly surprising painterly flourishes found in landscapes by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh or even Joan Mitchell. Similar to the blazing, almost neon orange sun in Monet’s famous Impression Sunrise, 1872, certain aspects of O’Neil’s compositions seem intended to emphasize the materiality of paint itself.
In addition to light effects, O’Neil has found inspiration in natural phenomena like starling murmurations and, most recently, the Santa Ana winds. Her paintings translate the dizzying patterns created by thousands of birds flying and swooping into colorful swirling compositions that communicate a sense of awe, but also danger.
Warm, dry air creates prime conditions for forest fires, which is why Native American tribes have referred to these intense storms as “devil winds.” In addition wreaking havoc on the natural landscape, the Santa Anas are associated with all kinds of strange reactions in humans ranging from physical ailments, like headaches, to psychological ones, like depression and anxiety.
As an East Coast native who grew up between New York City and East Hampton, O’Neil initially worried she might find California’s lack of seasons perturbing. Indeed, fall foliage, winter snow, spring blooms and summer heatwaves, have been replaced with wildfires, flooding, and sea-level rise.