Olivia Gibian: Selected Ambient Works

839 is pleased to announce Olivia Gibian’s debut solo show with the gallery, “Selected Ambient Works,” opening Saturday, September 7, 2024. The exhibition will bring together a collection of Gibian’s paintings on paper, intimately scaled gouache and watercolor abstractions that obliquely summon landscapes and the botanical. 

In “Devil’s Ivy 2,” 2020, a long and meandering bright red brushstroke seemingly stretches upward from the bottom edge of the work, delineating a vertically-oriented branch that is outlined by colorful, heart-shaped leaves. Some are banana yellow, others lime green, some are teal. One of the larger hearts–red, green, and yellow, upside down–appears to be drifting away from the vine. The plant form is set against a deep maroon ground that appears to have been painted around the foreground after the fact. The surface isn’t completely covered in paint though. The white of the paper peeks through around the edges of the plant, offsetting it against the darker background. Taken as a whole, this small work is an elegant display of vividly painted color that evokes a sense of movement and the awe of focused looking. 

Another work, “Angeles Crest,” 2018, is a horizontal abstraction that, taken with its title, suggests a sweeping landscape studded with large rocks and moments of colorful foliage. Mauve scribbly shapes and thin ochre lines that could be stalks of some sort contrast with a richly painted black background. Here, the white of the paper is used to offset the massing of forms that at once summon boulders and puddles. The top of the work is left untouched too, suggesting a bright open firmament, streaked with occasional strokes of sky blue and light violet. The effect is transporting and suggestive of its California namesake, while also firmly abstract and lyrical in the tradition of painters like Paul Klee, Helen Frankenthaler, and Patricia Trieb.