James Holl's Indeterminate Landscape at The Lockwood Gallery 2024

The Lockwood Gallery Presents “Indeterminate Landscapes” by Artist James Holl

October 28, 2024

Alan Goolman, curator of The Lockwood Gallery is proud to present a rarely-seen selection of paintings from James Holl’s esteemed “Indeterminate Landscapes,” a body of work created between 2001 and 2009.

“In 2001,” Holl said, “I began making paintings of the dirt beneath my feet. I took a ride in a small airplane to photograph rock formations on the desert floor. From that height, they reminded me of the small pebbles on the ground. The rocks seemed to express randomness. I looked at pictures of Japanese Rock Gardens. The thoughtful compositional placement of the rocks also seemed to express chance occurrences. I call these paintings “Indeterminate Landscapes.” One does not know if one is very close to the ground or very far away. I intend the forms to be ambiguous and the color associative with memories so that they may hold the gaze. The paintings are meditations on nature’s being. The exhibition includes the oil painting series “Catskill Souvenirs,” inspired by antique postcards capturing “en plein air” vistas in the Catskill Mountains. The oil paintings present an inquiry into the ambiguity of scale and gesture. My paintings belong to the long tradition of painting as defined by using the medium of paint, scale relating to the human figure, the possibility of flatness and pictorial space, the trace of the human hand, and the crystallization of time. By this definition, the practice is an attempt for a purity of expression, not tainted by literal referential content”.

James Holl exhibition: Indeterminate Landscapes

At The Lockwood Gallery: 747 Route 28, Kingston, New York
This exhibition will be on display from 11.2.24 through 12.1.24

Opening celebration with the artist, November 2, 4 PM to 6 PM

James Holl’s new publication, The Landscape Painter 1972–2023, chronicles a young artist’s journey from the era of modernism through the rise of postmodernism to the present. The artist’s artistic paths address the contrasting art theories and cultural shifts that influenced the artist and New York City during these dynamic times. Arriving at the present, Holl distills Landscapes to be of matter emerging from energy.