
"Fine shows by Irving Marcus and Laura Hohlwein"
by Victoria Dalkey. March 30, 2012
Hidden stories and encoded messages underlie the works of Irving Marcus and Laura Hohlwein.
Marcus, a prime candidate for a major retrospective at the Crocker Art Museum, taught for many years at California State University, Sacramento. Hohlwein, a mid-career artist, lives in Sacramento after having spent a number of years on the East Coast.
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At Solomon Dubnick, Hohlwein gives us a series of large-scale abstractions in oil that carry a submerged narrative about the destruction of a historic house on Long Island, N.Y., that was for many years a gathering place for her family.
In "Evening," a ghostly female figure descends a stairway with a black door at the top while the house seems to fly apart around her. In "Nightfall," shards of falling lumber deconstruct an interior that seems to be a bedroom with a notebook or journal lying abandoned on the bed.
"The Girl's Room" evokes a bright place filled with toys, flowers and sunlight now destroyed and left in a jumble of abstracted forms. "Hard Rain," the painting that gives Hohlwein's show its title, pours down forms reminiscent of Arshile Gorky's automatic imagery in a spate of disconnected shapes, some resembling falling houses.
Accompanying the paintings is a series of digital photos in which skeletal hands overlay images of a house. A series of prints on wood repeat imagery from the paintings and photos in an arrangement of hanging panels. These are powerful works as well, as is a book of stunning poems with accompanying images that is set out so you can read it at your leisure.
"Hard Rain" is a profoundly moving show, one in which the artist has put all of her heart and mind.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/30/4374119/victoria-dalkey-fine-shows-by.html#storylink=cpy