Bodily Light

OLD-SCHOOL MODERNISM MEETS the moment in the work of mid-career artist Loie Hollowell. The curving forms and luminous colors of the native Californian evoke the abstraction of artists who emerged in the twentieth century, whether Agnes Pelton’s energy-imbued biomorphic compositions or Hilma af Klint’s geometric interpretations of the astral plane. Yet the New York City-based artist, who has experienced a steady, mid-career rise to international acclaim over the past decade, approaches this tradition of American modernism with a contemporary perspective.

Born in 1983 in Woodland, California, Hollowell received her BFA at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her MFA in painting at Virginia Commonwealth University. The work on view in her first museum survey, Space Between, A Survey of Ten Years, turns women’s bodies into divine entities, including through the use of life casts of pregnant breasts and bellies.

“With the fall of Roe v. Wade and the persistent attack on women’s bodily autonomy, Hollowell’s work is necessary and urgent because it is so personal and generous, bringing communities of women together to commemorate their agency and strength,” says curator Amy Smith-Stewart.

The exhibition explores how Hollowell’s practice has evolved in response to her own experiences with motherhood and reproductive freedom, featuring paintings, works on paper, and pieces from her personal archive. Early works provocatively use elements of the human body based on Hollowell and her husband as abstract landscapes; later pieces evoke how she engaged with her body before and after childbirth by incorporating sculpted elements.

“When I was pregnant with my first child, my husband and I took a lifecast of my third-trimester belly just as a document, not with the intention of incorporating the form into my work,” Hollowell says. When she had her second child at home during the pandemic, she found the experience so “visceral and transformative” that she decided to create a mold from this cast to make her pregnant body part of her paintings.

Although Hollowell has experimented with a diversity of media, from subtle pastels to monumental paintings on high-density foam, there is an ongoing consideration of how time changes and shapes a body and how this transformation lends itself to the transcendent.

“I’ve found that bringing pieces of the physical body into my work—so literally—has allowed me to more deeply investigate the intensity of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.”

Space Between, A Survey of Ten Years will be on view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, through August 11, 2024.