East Hampton, NY – Tripoli Gallery is pleased to present Lola Montes: Akashic records. The exhibition will be on view at Tripoli Gallery East Hampton, 87 Newtown Lane, from July 31st through August 17th, 2015.
In theosophy and anthroposophy, the Akashic records (a term coined in the late 1800s from akasha or ākāśa, the Sanskrit word for “sky,” “space,” “luminous,” or “æther”) are a compendium of thoughts, events, and emotions believed by Theosophists to be encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the astral plane. There is no scientific evidence for existence of the Akashic records.
How to paint and what to paint is the central issue and question that all painters face. This could be said about life and how to live and what to do. The painters’ practice leads them to find their particular version and voice using tools that have been here before, but inventing a set of uses that are particular to them. Lola Montes is a maker of hallucinogenic scenes configuring into namable and unnamable, personal figurative works that are at home with Antonin Artaud and Jack Smith. Images, clear and cryptic, like in dreams where the unconscious mind connects the rational and irrational into poetry. Her exploration into film and her travels to far away places infuse her works with the exotic land of mystery and self-discovery. We are exhibiting five paintings that show the transition from ether to form, from drawing into painting, from etching into painting, painted and carved onto a pristine painted wooden surface. These works function as a solution and a question of what to do and how to make a personal work of art.
Lola Montes was born in New York, New York and graduated with a BFA from the Cooper Union in 2008. A painter, printmaker, photographer and filmmaker, she has exhibited internationally, including Tripoli Gallery, Southampton, NY; Ace Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Hole, New York, NY, among others. Recent exhibitions include Heaven, which was on view at the Shelbourne Hotel during Art Basel Miami 2014, and Forms Wrestling with Existence, at Eden Rock Gallery, Saint Barthélemy. She has collaborated with Max Mara Carte Blanche (2012) and Alice + Olivia (2015) on textile designs created from her watercolors, and her film work includes “Training Day,” a Nike commercial featuring Steve Nash, and projections for Lou Reed’s concert and feature film, Berlin, both in 2007. She recently completed a residency at Villa Lena in Italy, also producing prints at the Fondazione il Bisonte in Florence which gave rise to the works in this exhibition. She serves on the board of advisors at Anthology Film Archives, and in 2013 presented a film on Luigi Ontani, Dialogue Between Soul and Nature, at the 55th Venice Biennale. Previous exhibitions at Tripoli Gallery include Infinite Blinding Beam, 2009; Iodine Portraits, 2011; Night Vision, 2012; and Within Reach, 2013. Aakashic Records will be Lola’s fifth solo show with Tripoli Gallery. Lola Montes currently lives and works in New York City.
Above image: Lola Montes, Resting With Demons, 2015. pigment, molding paste, enamel and oil on sipo, 40 x 30 in
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