LORIEN SUAREZ. COALESCING GEOMETRIES.
By Milagros Bello, Ph.D.

Lorien Suarez creates complex webs of hand-made fractalized patterns. She proposes geometric figures in never-ending configurations of infinite iterations. At different scales, and through different “fractured” recurring schemes, the geometric forms progressively augment and multiply in expansive dimensions. Vortexes and vibrant fluids, both tactile and aerial, operate in recursive constructions. Depths, ratios, proportions, scales, and ranges in strong colored stances emerge as relational points of departure. They mimic the cosmic world in imaginary projections of conversing energy waves, multiplying crystals, galactic systems, molecular interfaces, and collisions of particles as forceful form/type model generators.

The intricate visual result signals the artist’s insight and awareness that plainly reveal her force and strong being. In her retrospective, Coalescing Geometries, she affirms, “Creating art is in essence a practice of being attentive and focused in the present moment. Creative insights come to light. Over time, intuitive spiritual expressiveness grows.” The work comes from a vigorous creativity and a resourceful inventiveness that doesn’t need the use of any computer software mediation. It’s Suarez’s artistic hand over canvas or paper, the painter’s sole imprint, which sets the conception of this ingenious imagery.

Endorsing her artistic identity, Suarez asserts: “Art to me is a form of knowledge of the heart. Creative practice brings forth discoveries that outlive their creators, serve the evolution of meaningful understanding, and give birth to a more profound vision of the unfolding of life.”

In a further step, the artist goes beyond the complexity of her geometrical creations. Their self- generated turns and expansions also correlate to jewel-like geometric shapes, such as it is in the “amplituhedron”, a geometric object that challenges notions of space and time in quantum physics (Wolchover, Natalie. A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics. Quanta Magazine). This refers to a jewel-like multifaceted master geometry that was conceived by physicists Nima Arkani-Hamed (a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.) and Jaroslav Trnka (a post-doctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology) to project quantum particles’ multidimensional trajectories in the subatomic world. Departing from this parameter, the artist traces comprehensive structures that build up together in many facets and volumes, in a rich interplay of kinematic conglomerates (Wolchover, Natalie). She creates “transposed geometries”, altered and swapped, rearranged in sparkled diagrams, in fizzed organizations, in an open system of space, time, and movement.

At first, and attuned with the Mandelbrot model, the artist’s work establishes schemes of visual chaos and order, producing multiple organizations in orderly generators and extensive, shaped iterations. Continuous and self-mirrored structures expand or contract in a decentered visual composition. Euclidian “fractalized” and multihued circles, rectangles, and squares, subdivide in vibrant assemblies of variable densities. (Taylor, Richard. Fractal Expressionism. Where Art Meets Science.)

The visual morphologies of hard-edge outlines superimpose or revolve one into other in mathematical calculations. The works conform a vision of the universe in its meticulous micro and macro optic constructs. The viewer changes perspective from the rational vertical/horizontal paradigm to a sprawling kinetic perception projecting invisible domains in which materiality dissolves towards intangibility and immanence.

The work merges two essential elements of visual plasticity appropriated from modernist aesthetics, a potent graphic line of defined contours that strongly delineate and give character to forms, and a chart of colors that desegregate and disseminate into rich tone values and hues. It is at once both a graphic and a painterly approach, reinforcing the “autonomy of means” of the pieces in which the image possesses a “self-sufficient autonomy” (Wolchover, Natalie). The rhythmic lines entwined with luxuriant hues consolidate a compelling visual execution in which any reference to the real is unnecessary.

“Wheel Within A Wheel 16,” one of Suarez’s seminal works from 2003, displays a visual chaos/order of a crystal configuration. Fractal colored forms repeat in augmenting boosting patterns, virally interweaving and magnifying. Numerous geometrical subsidiaries, triangles, circles, and convex polygons proliferate in a lavish arrangement of the aerial composition. Governing circles, positioned in tensional asymmetrical locations, emerge as dominant form generators. The flowery and elaborate crystal forms spread widely in the hinted space producing powerful optical effects.

The work “Wheel Within A Wheel 50,” shows a huge spinning spiral rotating ad infinitum in a scattering process. It is a complex formulation of multiple interactions and frequencies, showing high-amplitude dimensions that refer to a 3-D quantum graph of moving particles. It is a visual platform for an all-encompassing inward/outward continuum of space-time. At the center of the spiral, there are three core generators, three epicenters of expanding energy, that radially project crisp trajectories, fracturing the planes inside-out and vice versa. The interlacing of colors enhances the kinetic effects, into a hyper recursive panorama of the universe.

The painting “Wheel Within A Wheel 114,” stands as one of the most important canvases in the artist’s production. In it, there is a deep immersion into pure pictorialism, and a major emphasis on volume, paint and mass. Expressive layers of glutinous tint appear in fractioned compounds. A bulky snake-like geometry retorts and spirals inside-out in figure/ground illusionistic effects. The negative space disappears into the physical body of the colossal curly geometry. The multihued fragments succeed one another, continuously dissolving into endless torsions as in a sequel of an Escher-like tessellation design.

In summary, the artist names the unnamable and visually articulates the invisible routes of the metaphysics of the cosmos.

*Dr Milagros Bello’s critical essay “Transposed Geometries” was first published in “Coalescing Geometries” (2019 International Latino Book Award – First Place “Mariposa” 1st Non-Fiction book and Second Place in the Artbook categories). The book features Suarez’s “Wheel within a Wheel” abstract geometric paintings, the artist’s reflections, and critical essays by Peter Frank, Terrence Sanders, John Mendelsohn, Britni Winkler Winkler, and Evan Senn. Published by Art Voices Books and distributed worldwide, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Curator Dr Milagros Bello holds a PhD in Sociology with a doctoral thesis in Sociology of Art from Sorbonne University (Paris VII-Jussieu), Paris, France. Dr Bello is an art critic member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). Dr Bello has curated numerous shows in contemporary art locally and nationally; she is an art writer for local and international art magazines and a former Senior Editor of Arte Al Dia International art magazine. Since 2000, Bello has taught as a professor of art and critical theories at the Florida International University, Florida Atlantic University, Miami International University (The Art Institute/Miami), and the Istituto Marangoni/Miami. From 2010-2020, she was the director and chief curator of Curator’s Voice Art Projects in Miami, Florida/USA, which pivoted to the new MIA Curatorial Projects due to the pandemic.

Art Voices Art Books:
https://artvoicesbooks.com/#/lorien-suarezkanerva/
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Coalescing-Geometries-Lorien-Su%C3%A1rez-
Kanerva/dp/1732004838
Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lorien-suarez-kanerva-coalescing-geometries-lorien-suarez-
kanerva/1141459253

Ascaso Gallery is thrilled to share with you the new video of Andrew Hem | Reviver

30 June 2022 – 30 July 2022

Ascaso Gallery is pleased to present Reviver, a solo exhibition of work by Los Angeles artist Andrew Hem. Known for his unearthly color aesthetic and a singular approach to portraiture, Hem weaves emotional narratives around figures inhabiting breathtaking landscapes and twilight cityscapes, employing these settings to convey states such as wonder, resilience and interconnectedness, and on the other hand, guilt, turmoil and alienation.

This body of work is a reflection on Hem’s transition into fatherhood, and the conflicts and traumas he experienced in his youth that he hopes to avert in his son’s future. In Hem’s work, levitation represents changing the path, choosing a different direction from the one society expects of us, and reflections — mirrored in the water, shimmering on shiny fabric, gleaming on wet pavement — suggest that everything that happens around us has an influence on us that can resonate onto future generations, unless we consciously sidestep the mistakes of history. Reflections also give hints about the figure’s inner life — one pair of mirrored figures has only a single reflection, another reflection meets your eye while its source remains introspective, and a third subject throws a distorted reflection, implying inner demons.

Growing up in a tough neighborhood where he and his family were the only Asians, Hem remembers feeling an overwhelming sense of isolation as a child. Since the only representation of people like himself he saw in popular culture was in anime and martial arts films, he embraces those aesthetics, but re-envisions them as an inclusive milieu where men of all races are seen as creative, thoughtful and vulnerable, and women are described not as passive aesthetic objects, but as wonderers, adventurers and warriors. Mindful that his own son never experiences that cultural isolation, Hem continually strives in his work to conjure a world that doesn’t yet exist, where no one is an outcast and everyone, no matter how different they are, is accepted.

Amanda Erlanson, Art Essayist 

About the Artist:

Born during his parents’ flight from Cambodia in the wake of the Khmer Rouge genocide, Andrew Hem grew up poised in the balance between two cultures — the rural animistic society of his Khmer ancestors, and the dynamic urban arts of the tough Los Angeles neighborhood where his family eventually came to rest. He received his BFA from Art College Center of Design, and went on to have solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, London and Paris. His public art commissions include a courthouse mural and a medical center mosaic for the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, and mural installations in the of California, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Japanese American National Museum.

For more information,

please contact [email protected]

Tel. +1 305 571 9410

Hours: Monday – Saturday 10 am – 6 pm EDT

Ascaso Gallery Inc, 1325 NE 1st Avenue, Miami, FL 33132

“Punctuated Equilibrium” Curated by Peter Frank
Ricardo Mazal Santa Fe Studio, May 2022
by Lorien Suárez-Kanerva

Curated by Peter Frank, “Punctuated Equilibrium” showcased a selection of paintings from abstract expressionist artists Alison Hyman and Elaine Asarch.
Eric Minh Swenson documented Frank’s curatorial statement and Asarch and Hyman’s artworks from the show and at their studios.
Punctuated Equilibrium Video:

In our interview, Frank, Asarch, and Hyman delved into the context of the exhibition alongside the artists’ experiences, perceptions, and artwork.

LSK: How would you address the connection between the concept of “punctuated equilibrium” and the social polemics Hyman and Asarch consider through their work as abstract expressionist artists?
Peter Frank: The historical pattern of speciation was theorized as phyletic gradualism, smooth and continuous evolutionary change as suggested by fossil record. By contrast, Punctuated equilibrium, developed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, posits long periods of evolutionary stasis disturbed infrequently but dramatically by brief periods of branching speciation – a stepwise, asymmetric process. Thus, the new theory reflects pauses and interruptions in earthly history caused by geological and otherwise seismic events that have changed the way the world works and the way we see it. Perhaps at this point, we do not need to be reminded of the parallel crises in nature and civilization we are witnessing (or even feeding), and we can be forgiven for suspecting that each crisis abets the other.
(Scientists and social scientists alike are coming to that very realization.)

But art, modeling as it does the world(s) we inhabit and might inhabit, displays back to us our sense of crisis, at once generalizing that sense into spirit and clarifying that sense into calls for and pathways to action, both urgent and strategic. An artwork can contain all the representations and nuances of a flag, adding to and amplifying such meanings until they describe whole landscapes of actual and potential events and ideas. Asarch and Hyman do not expect their paintings themselves to effect change. But in creating worlds of color and atmospheres of inflection, in grasping the aesthetic lessons of abstract expressionism as applicable to human discourse beyond art itself (as the abstract expressionists themselves did), the two painters move beyond a platform for self-expression and towards one of universal discourse. The key to ending hunger and homelessness, war and famine, sickness and declimatization, is not buried in these canvases but our sensibilities. But these canvases exemplify patterns of realization that can bring the key to light.

LSK: From your perspective as artists, how is Punctuated Equilibrium a concept reflected in your paintings?
Elaine Asarch: The concept for the Santa Fe show, “Punctuated Equilibrium,” came from my graduate studies in anthropology. The pandemic seemed to be one of these junctures where there have been major paradigm shifts in how we live and work. Mask wearing and working remotely have at the same time made us more hidden and yet more connected through technology and have created a culture of fear for the health of ourselves and our loved ones. Erosion of our environment due to climate patterns and social inequities such as health, education, and food insecurities due to the pandemic has made us look at our world and society very differently and, hopefully, more compassionately. My paintings reveal the emotional side of those tensions, fears, and hopes.

Alison Hyman: During the two years of the Covid lockdown, I painted “Seismic Love”. It began the same way as all my others, with a fast gestural covering of the canvas, pigments into gesso. It moved rapidly towards an entirely different language of abstraction – the colors were flat, the edges sharp. I felt compelled to paint this way, reverting to my student days of textile design and printmaking. Two years later, I recognized it for what it was only after its completion – my responses to the world as it had changed. The composition has swirls and curves leading nowhere to dead ends. The repeated apertures and closures eventually eroded our initial understanding of the crisis. As an artist, my paintings reflect these periods of conflict subconsciously but profoundly and personally.

Frank’s conceptual analysis focused on the temporal and timeless abiding in Hyman and Asarch’s work.
“In times of uncertainty and upheaval, abstraction can present the same vitality and urgency as any other artistic language. Abstract art, however, balances urgency with a sense of timelessness. The work of Alison Hyman and Elaine Asarch seeks to manifest the momentous and the eternal equally.”

Both artists addressed these dichotomies in more detail, revealing distinct creative vantage points and sensibilities.

LSK: Can you describe your experience with balance amidst matters of urgency at the moment with a sense of timelessness?
Asarch: The moment is transitory, and if I don’t grab it in an instant, what is happening changes, and I may feel differently, depending on the experience. I try to capture a reaction to a particular moment.
Creating a balance between angst and hope creates a tension in my paintings which also brings life to them and hopefully will create a universal response about both the existential fears and joys of life amidst the inevitability of time and the erosion of the components affected by it.

Hyman: The dichotomies in life are fascinating. In my mid-twenties, I taught Jimmy Boyle and Larry Winters in Glasgow’s 1973 Barlinnie Prison Special Unit experiment. It was a small group of extremely violent prisoners considered unmanageable. Jimmy Boyle ultimately became a sculptor and author. There was a contrast between the dark, oppressive maximum security prison and what these men produced. Although confined, their imaginations soared freely. From the 30 years of teaching art making and art history in colleges, my biggest joy is seeing pupils be creative and find their voice. Unbalance is at the outset. I strive for a balanced completion. I explore the things we can feel but cannot see imprecisely in an organic manner through obscured images and messages. Some are visible, while I conceal others to create the story I share. To visualize the things we can feel but cannot see in an intuitive and innately human way.

LSK: How does your work through the use of formal compositional elements such as color, gesture, light, and space address these questions?
Asarch: Training as an interior designer has helped me as an artist. I created spaces and shaped landscapes. Elements such as color, orientation, rhythm, balance, shape, and harmony influence and innately guide me, but my senses also affect me. Success on the canvas is more about the interpretation of emotion. I turned to abstraction as I was less inhibited by it than the representation of the elements. I was able to paint more from the heart and a deeper place. Gesture is an extension of my emotion rather than a response to pure design.

Hyman: We start a painting as one person, and in completing it, we are different. We have changed with the painting. We live only in the sliver of the present time, a continuous flow from the past to the future. It is non-spacial and without form. We try to control time by creating equal units to explain it. Still, we all experience it differently.
Over months, building layers of images, textures, and colors: obscuring, adding, removing, and peeling back, much like reverse archeology, creating the layers and strata for the viewer to uncover, I am making images and covering them with transparent, translucent and opaque colors, creating a sense of time and exploration, much like when you look at something old and worn that has had many uses, and you can see glimpses of other beautiful images underneath.

LSK: How does Punctuated Equilibrium touch upon your experiences as women artists?
Asarch: I admire Joan Mitchell, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Agnes Martin, and Rebecca Horn. I don’t know if they had families, but with their success, they had to make choices as women.
I hope it’s an optimum time to immerse myself in art now. It wasn’t when I was raising my children. I see my daughter and daughters-in-law, and they face similar decisions.
The image of perfection in motherhood is unattainable. Today there’s more acceptance of women pursuing their passions and career paths while raising families, but I am not sure it’s easier emotionally.
I hope that motherhood has brought greater depth to my paintings. Perhaps the urgency in knowing there is less time to establish my career as an artist endows a new dimension to my work.
Elaine Asarch Video:

Hyman: As a wife, mother, and educator, it has been tough to have adequate creative energy left to pursue my artistic goals with enough time to truly immerse myself in the process.
While I’ve been painting and exhibiting my entire life, with motherhood in my twenties onwards, I had a chance only in the last decade to evolve as an artist fully.

Most women with families have had to quieten our voices to fit in with society and expectations. The process has enormous pleasure and fulfillment, but we use our finite energy to raise and nurture. Now in my sixties, my children are adults, and those past experiences have tempered my creativity and message, so it is stronger than ever.
Alison Hyman Video:

Frank, Asarch, and Hyman crafted an exhibition that spoke earnestly and incisively about today’s social crisis points. Following the isolation experienced through Covid-19, their timely collaborative effort engaged anew a community forum erstwhile sharing their creative journeys in the more intimate setting of Ricardo Mazal’s Santa Fe studio.