Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to welcome New York based painter Alison Fox to Domestic for Wide Ruins, the artist’s first solo show in Los Angeles.
The Hopi Kachina serves as the main inspiration for Alison Fox’s recent series of paintings. Representing animals, insects, plants, and natural forces such as clouds, rain, the sun and death, Kachinas are the spirit of the gods who provide an explanation for phenomena occurring in the real world. Manifest in physical form as costumed men wearing elaborate masks and headdresses, or as carved and painted “dolls” known as tihu, the Kachina balances the spiritual and material realms.
Applying these ideas to her own studio practice, Fox uses the Kachina as a metaphor, subject and formal device in constructing her paintings. In the works on view, this dialectic is represented by the tension between contrasting pattern, object, abstract form and composition. Fox ably incorporates the beauty and simplicity of weaving techniques with the repetition of patterns sourced from Najavo rug design and textiles to create colorful, richly textured pictures that indicate the presence of the Kachina but remain expressive abstractions.