Loaded: Drawings by Mary O’Malley and Laura Sharp Wilson
Sam Lee GalleryLos Angeles CA
October 13 - November 24, 2012
Sam Lee Gallery is pleased to present Loaded, featuring ink drawings by Boston-based artist Mary O’Malley and acrylic and graphite drawings by Salt Lake City-based artist Laura Sharp Wilson. Using paper as their primary medium, both artists individually create work that’s quite rich in the layering of forms and patterns. Loaded examines their interest in depicting something that has been imagined before it is drawn. Both O’Malley and Wilson conjure a world or system that’s entirely their own. They do not draw from living motifs. Rather, O’Malley and Wilson prefer artificial sources—often creating an alternate “natural” universe where hybridization is the modus operandi.
O’Malley’s recent work depicts quasi-architectural or mosque-like structures that are densely rendered with gold metallic ink on velvety black paper and conflates Baroque ornamentation with Islamic sensibilities. The minimum palette emphasizes the complexity of details and the rigorous orderliness of patterns. Against the stark background, O’Malley’s “organic” structures operate between untamed energies and orderly systems; they pulsate and arrest at the same time.