Artists

Annie Lapin

Press release

One of the most dramatic and emotive subjects in the history of art is the depiction of nature in all of its sublime grandeur. The psychology of “the sublime” thereby not only describes a modern aesthetic quality, but also conveys artistic, cultural and social expectations. Annie Lapin’s solo show Emptied by the Sun at KOENIG2 by_robbygreif poses questions about an alternative, contemporary perspective on the topicality of the sublime in a time of alienation.

Annie Lapin (*1978 in Washington, lives and works in Los Angeles) initiates each painting with pours of pigment on linen, facilitating the slow, physical motions of paint. She then adds layers of imagery, almost randomly generating compositions through a Rorschach-like response to the physical paint, without necessarily considering the significance of the added forms, tapping into her visual memory extended through the archive of cultural detritus online. In her current body of work, Lapin has flipped the canvas during her painting process, furthering the dual effect of inverting the directions of production and perception, as well as the meanings conveyed by each. As a result (if the concept of such traditional pictorial categories can even be considered) the background appears to merge with the foreground, objects merge with subjects, light merges with darkness, and vice versa, creating a swirl of dynamic, yet indistinct depth that simultaneously emerges and falls apart.