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We are proud to present a solo exhibition of recent work by Los Angeles based artist Caitlin Lonegan. "The Mark on the Wall" will feature both large and small scale paintings and works on paper completed over the past eighteen months. The exhibition takes its title from a 1917 short work by Virginia Woolf whose narrator reflects on her responses to a mark she observes above her mantle. Musing on what might have caused the mark, the narrator tracks the reader through a myriad of responses on why she comes to each conclusion before discovering, in the last line, what it really is.
Lonegan's work is inspired by themes touched upon in this story, such as perception, memory, the blurring between lines of fiction and illusion, as well as a commitment to the type of progressive and self-reflective experience that is constructed by the story. Lonegan's working process is intuitive, inspired by previous work that relies on a set of marks, fields and logic structures developed over time. Her paintings conspire to create an active state of questioning by the viewer regarding the nature of assumptions and associations, yet maintaining an overall sense of completion and sense of arrival. Interested as much in the relationship between paintings as she is in the individual work, Lonegan's paintings evolve from both a notion of chance and deliberate application strategies.
Constructed in layers, the paintings are primarily made of oil paint, linseed oil and turpentine. In the smaller works, Lonegan uses a range of paper types and water based media: ink, acrylic, watercolor gouache, as well as dry media: colored pencil, pastel, crayon, charcoal and pencil. Material effects, compositions and textures are honed through the small paintings and works on paper and then enacted in larger scale works.
Lonegan holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from University of California, Los Angeles. A recipient of the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant in 2010, this is Lonegan's second solo exhibition at ACME.
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