Lonnie Holley | The Influence of Images | Viewing Room
This new series of paintings was created during Holley’s artist-in-residency at the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton, NY in 2020. During his time there he made artworks layered with spray paint and acrylic, adding an immediacy to the imagery.
Follow this link to view the exhibition, Everything That Wasn’t White, created by Holley during his residency at the Elaine de Kooning House.
Elizabeth Leach Gallery is proud to present Lonnie Holley’s atmospheric, dream-like painted works on paper that feature repeated, overlapping silhouettes and three-dimensional effects.
Lonnie Holley, Seeing Through the Background, 2021, spray paint and mixed media on paper, 34.75 x 27" framed
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Watch the making of THE INFLUENCE OF IMAGES
This entrancing music video features Holley working at the Elaine de Kooning Residency. Music by Hypnotic Brass Ensemble with vocals by Perfume Genius.
Lonnie Holley working in the studio
Courtesy of Elaine de Kooning House
Photo: Katherine McMahon
Art is the language that all people speak. I feel like I can speak back to my ancestors through my art. Art is the only language we all speak. You mention resiliency; well, that’s the only defense we have. We couldn’t break those chains, just like I can’t break the chains that are still put on us today. My imagination—our imagination—is sometimes our only way out. I think so many songs the slaves sang were about that. We have a future in our imagination, and I suppose we can rewrite our past through it, too. Art saved my life. It was the lifeline I found. It was my floatation device.
–LONNIE HOLLEY, BOMB MAGAZINE, 2019
Lonnie Holley, The Memory of Freedom, 2020, spray paint and mixed media on paper, 34.75 x 27" framed
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Lonnie Holley playing music
Courtesy of Elaine de Kooning House
Photo: Katherine McMahon
Multi-talented artist Lonnie Holley is well known for his mesmerizing experimental music. Listen to a preview of I’m a Suspect from his 2018 album, MITH, featuring I Woke Up in a Fucked Up America (16th on Pitchfork’s 100 Best Songs of 2018).
Holley’s stencils in the studio
Courtesy of Elaine de Kooning House
Photo: Katherine McMahon
"ART IS THE LANGUAGE THAT ALL PEOPLE SPEAK"
Lonnie Holley, Beyond the Anger, 2021, spray paint and mixed media on paper, 29 x 22.5" framed
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Nested shapes appear to radiate and float in the cosmos amid a softly diffused palette of grays, pinks, blues, and yellows that emphasize their transformative, mystical quality.
Lonnie Holley, They Were Teachers (Women), 2021, spray paint and mixed media on paper, 29 x 22.5" framed
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Holley’s startling sculptures reveal a keen sense for the expressive properties of found materials, from insouciantly figurative…to evocatively abstract.
– THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 2017
Wire sculpture made during Holley’s time at the residency
Courtesy of Elaine de Kooning House
Photo: Katherine McMahon
ABOVE: In 2018 Elizabeth Leach Gallery and the C:3 Initiative (now Stelo Arts) sponsored Holley’s residency with KSMoCA and later exhibited the sculptural work he produced at the corresponding art fair.
Lonnie Holley, Understanding New Nature, 2021, spray paint and mixed media on paper, 30.25 x 24.5" framed
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Lonnie Holley in the studio
Courtesy of Elaine de Kooning House
Photo: Katherine McMahon
Installation view of The Influence of Images at Elizabeth Leach Gallery
Lonnie Holley is a sculptor, painter and musician who has been making multimedia artworks since the 1980s. His improvisational studio process incorporates found objects including natural elements and repurposed materials to create figurative and abstract imagery that commemorate places, people, and events. In 2021, Holley has solo exhibitions currently on view at the South Etna Montauk Foundation (Montauk, NY) and the Parrish Art Museum (Water Mill, NY). His work is also included in the group exhibition From The Limitations of Now at the Philbrook Museum of Art, (Tulsa, OK). An 18-minute musical film about the artist’s relationship to freedom in America, I Snuck off the Slave Ship, co-directed with Cyrus Moussavi, was shown at Sundance in 2019. Holley’s work is included in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), American Folk Art Museum (New York, NY), Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, AL), High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), Milwaukee Museum of Art (Milwaukee, WI), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA), Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC), among others. In 2006 Holley received the Joan Mitchell Fellowship. The artist lives and works in Atlanta, GA.
