KIM FISHER
CAITLIN LONEGAN
CARMEN NEELY
BRIAN WILLS

Ochi Gallery is pleased to present An imprint of the smallest gesture, a group exhibition featuring works by Kim Fisher, Caitlin Lonegan, Carmen Neely, and Brian Wills. The exhibition will be on view from June 12 through August 7, 2021. An imprint of the smallest gesture features four artists who engage with the history of abstraction while pushing contemporary boundaries of form via varied and nuanced aspects of mark making, materiality, light, color, and movement, within their ongoing studio practices.

Kim Fisher’s multifaceted process begins with the gathering of ephemeral paper media and magazines with which she assembles paper collages. Through a laborious method of hand dying linen, Fisher creates matte black backgrounds, stretching the material on the bias—an unusual and subtle gesture that amplifies perception and appreciation for detail. Fisher then airbrushes oil paint onto laser cut aluminum shapes, fashioned after the torn paper in her collages, building up layers of subtle gradient until surfaces pulsate. In the final work, glowing shapes seem to float on light-absorbing black backgrounds—a persuasive statement using optical parallels between color, form, and space.

Initially captivating and dynamic, Caitlin Lonegan’s paintings reveal themselves slowly, as subtleties in composition, energy, and color unfold the longer observation persists. Lonegan’s dedicated practice of slowly developing surfaces produces work that is seductive and surprising. Iridescent hues containing ground mica are mixed with transparent pigments and applied across a painting’s surface to create potent and dynamic spaces. The result is almost transcendental when juxtaposed against a skillfully applied range of marks—an act of looking that mimics making as the eye is guided across, in, and around.

Carmen Neely considers her paintings to be a tool for translation, acting as a collection of abstracted, visual embodiments of identity, language, memories, and feelings. Gestures collectively enact personal narratives, engaging as characters in a nonlinear play. Physicality, sensuality, joy, and femininity are manifested into line, shape, and color.

Employing thread, paint, and occasionally polyurethane, Brian Wills creates works that emphasize the notion that line and color are to be experienced instead of simply observed. One at a time individual strands of thread are laboriously wrapped around wood substrates, eventually creating surfaces that vibrate and shift depending on available light and a viewer’s motion approaching a work. This tension between the fragile and the fixed offers the viewer illusions of movement, curve, and dimension.

Kim Fisher (b. 1973) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BFA from University of California, Los Angeles, CA and her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA. Fisher’s work has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Scotland; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL; LAXART, the Institute for Contemporary Art, and in Made in LA Biennial 2014 at the Hammer Museum, all located in Los Angeles, CA.

Caitlin Lonegan (b. 1982) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received a BA from Yale University in 2005 and an MFA from the University of Los Angeles in 2010. Her work has been included in Made in LA (2014) at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, she was a Joan Mitchell MFA Award Recipient and her work is included in public collection such as Berezdivin Collection, Puerto Rico, Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA and the Strauss Collection, Rancho Santa Fe, Ca. She has exhibited nationally and internationally most recently at Vielmetter, Los Angeles, and Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna, Austria.

Carmen Neely (b. 1987) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She earned her MFA in studio art from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2016, and a BFA in painting from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2012. Her work has been exhibited at AIR Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Greensboro Project Space, Greensboro, NC; Ghost Gallery, Seattle, WA; Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, NY; Lump Gallery, Raleigh, NC; MX Gallery, New York, NY; New Gallery of Modern Art, Charlotte, NC; Plank Gallery, Seattle, WA; Prizm Art Fair, Miami, FL; Untitled Art Fair, Miami, FL; Setareh Gallery, Dusseldorf, DE; Student Union Gallery, Charlotte, NC and at Vacation Gallery, New York, NY. Neely has been a resident artist at Sparkbox Studio, Ontario, Canada, Vermont Studio Center, and McColl Center for Art + Innovation.

Brian Wills (b. 1970) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received his BA from Denison University, his MA from Harvard University, and JD from Harvard Law School. His work has been exhibited in numerous gallery exhibitions including TOTAH, New York; Quint Gallery, La Jolla; Ochi Gallery, Idaho; and was included in the group show Swells of Californian Light and Space artists held between Petzel Gallery and Metro Pictures. He has additionally been included in exhibitions at museums and institutions that include the Underground Museum, Los Angeles; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles. Wills' work is part of numerous public and private collections including The Jarl Mohn Family Foundation, Los Angeles; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs; The Estee Lauder Collection, New York; and Fundación/Colección Jumex, Mexico City.

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