Girls Rule Contemporary Abstraction
Mar 21, 2023
The quest to find emerging female abstract painters at galleries, museums and fairs can be daunting. Many girl painters are drawn to figuration and a narrative. Recently, passing WINDOW on Walker Street, I stopped to ponder EJ Hauser’s Orchard Thinking, 2022, possessing a hot pink power. This feeling was a kindred spirit to a memory of the Pink Power Ranger I once saw as a feminist hero in the Super Sentai Japanese franchise, although her character lost points for wearing a skirt. A comparison can be drawn to the skirt and a window installation or the downtown contemporary galleries giving these artists a spotlight. Metaphorically, the skirt that separates the girls is a jump start to unrestricted career movement and abstraction is veiled with gender neutrality. However, more exposure from mega-galleries would strip differentiation.
Ej Hauser
Discovery is EJ Hauser in the WINDOW on Walker Street in Tribeca and the off-the-grid gallery in downtown LA. Brooklyn-based artist, EJ Hauser, syncs her drawing and painting practice. Her previous digi-beasts disappeared, leaving simplified traces of her own mark-making language that combines art, nature, the origins of technology and subconscious emotion. The tension between spiritual satisfaction through nature and a technological takeover, illustrated in cleverly analogous visual language, speaks to the juxtaposition of contemporary life. Mountain peaks and waves are so subtly represented through marks, one can see intention through repetitive, layered abstraction. Orchard Thinking, 2022, is a show-stopper with CMYK pink and cyan blue punch.
Lucy Mu Li
Like Hauser, Lucy Mu Li from Southern California is interdisciplinary, combining photography and painting. Playing on the elements of water, earth, and sky Li’s philosophical paintings are metaphors for that which embodies life itself. She has an obsession with infinity as one painting extends to the next continuing the metaphysical narrative, “time is the artist, water is the hand that paints, stone is the traveler”. Moving are references to love, family, elders, aging and how time transforms stones (humans) into sand. So inspired by one of her titles, to age is to unearth, I jotted it down as a reminder. In response, unearthing exceptional female emerging artists is the intent. If I could only express in two words Li’s work, like a condensed haiku, it would be moving movement.
Jadé Fadojutimi
Drawing on her eclectic interests in Japanese anime and sounds, like the Crown soundtrack, one can imagine the atmosphere of Fadojutimi’s South London studio. The bold energy of her vibrant colors, brushstrokes and large-scale canvases create excitement and a feeling of awe and wonder as if you’ve had an epiphany about what life should be if you were living it properly. Fadojutimi’s world sparks an urge to dance, sing without shame, walk the red carpet wearing something fabulous while running through an English floral garden. Too much? Maybe not, she expressed, “It is heartbreakingly beautiful just to exist. I mean those two words literally. Life is really fucking beautiful. It just means accepting everything that comes with it, spilling into the time that we have; one of the many definitions of ‘love’”. Abstract girls rule in part because they love to express love.
Heather Day
Another California abstract artist, Heather Day, deconstructs compositions and reinvents through a rearrangement of disrupted composition. The freshness lies in its deconstruction and yet she achieves a harmonious flow from one panel of canvas to the next. Blue Prism No. 1 and Rose Prism No. 1 are like cut-up Frankenthalers repurposed and defaced with mixed media. Giving geometry to stained canvas and blended paint may seem irreverent, but it’s the deconstruction of preciousness and reimaging Abstract Expressionism that is au courant. Almost juvenile marks of finger-smudged color add a precocious yet intentional flair. Day’s work is more purely abstract and when her titles become verbs, the paintings take on a simplistic, mysterious identity.
Heather Day - Mirror, 2021. Mixed media on stitched canvas. Courtesy gallery Anna Zorina
Cindy Phenix
A London-based online presentation of LA artist, Cindy Phenix, is another not-so-hidden gem. French Canadian artist, Cindy Phenix, is based in LA. Although her work rotates between abstraction and figuration, paintings like Unfold, 2023, are void of figuration and a narrative built on a critic of societal power structures. Phenix works on a foundation of clearly defined illustration with a technique of filling in the organic forms with textured opaque color while leaving some of the linen exposed. A sense of the hard-edged digital is reminiscent of Hauser. When Phenix blurs the lines between figuration and abstraction, Vertiginous Attraction to the Alien, her work achieves a sophistication and mystery that comes with discovery, time and the evolution of an emerging artist.
Cindy Phenix - The Space Between the Fundamental, 2022. Oil & pastel on linen. Courtesy of the artist
Much like the recent work of EJ Hauser, Lucy Mu Li and Jadé Fadojutimi, the space between vaguely recognizable imagery and abstraction is the sweet spot. Potentially in this zone, there exists a more universal appeal. Relatable elements imbued with mystery is the magic and female-identifying artists handle this territory very well. Interpretation of this phenomenon can be derived from a balance of páthos and nous (ancient Greek for emotion and intellect).
Considering a recent revival of Surrealists Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and portrait painter Alice Neel, there is art market demand for the history of the páthos/nous fire that contemporary female abstract artists are presenting now in the most current downtown galleries. In theory, more women are running galleries and therefore discovering fresh new talent. Contemporary female figurative artists have had an impressive level of success on the primary and secondary markets. Abstraction is the new shift and more female artists will emerge. From a seasoned abstractionist, LA’s Rebecca Morris, is the conclusion from her whimsical manifesto: “Campaign against the literal “ABSTRACTION FOREVER!”
A declaration that girls rule abstraction is a declaration of present and future independence, a fresh genre of contemporary abstraction that just instantly feels different and relatable. These artists are on the rise. They are the Pink Power Rangers, the role models for the next generation of ambitious young artists who see no gender-specific obstacles. As a collective creative global community, we can challenge the societal power structures Phenix brings to our attention in her imaginary yet real world. The bolder statements are always there under layers of art history and paint.
Featured image: Cavernous Resonance - Jadé Fadojutimi, 2020 Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery / Eva Herzog
By Amanda Wall
