Seydisfjördur, Iceland
100 West 2nd Floor Studio
Artist Linus Lohmann transforms the 2nd-Floor Studio of 100 West into a veritable laboratory of line. The artist mixes experimental inks from crushed acorns found along the sidewalk outside the residency building and crude oil siphoned from a local well. Gold squiggles and loops contrast with drawings that capture more strident movements of the artist’s hand. Ink dots, points of matter, at first appear isolated, mirroring each separate experience of consciousness, but together aggregate into powerful forms of density and weight.
In addition to these hand drawings, the artist is producing a series of etchings, prints, and wire sculptures, continuing his interest in diverse materials.
Lohmann’s drawings are at once experiments in abstraction and revelatory expressions of color, form, and absence. Contemplation of these large-scale paper works evokes the wild and mysterious landscapes of Iceland where Linus resides, the country’s changing weather patterns, and its otherworldly quality of light. Lohmann uses line and pointillistic explosions of color as gestures that release the ineffable rather than attempt to contain it. Within his drawings, the viewer catches glimpses, hints, whispers of images and associations—perhaps a fjord emerging in the fog, a bush, the silhouette of a ship. Each almost-revelation tantalizes before dissolving back into its constituent marks. This oscillation between emerging and dissolving images generates existential meditations on meaning, pattern, and ephemerality within the viewer.
