Lia Halloran created over 500 paintings during a 13-year period while making the book The Warped Side of Our Universe: An Odyssey through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel and Gravitational Waves, co-authored by Halloran and Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Kip Thorne. The book will be released by Norton/Liveright on October 31st and the gallery will host a book signing on Saturday, December 16th from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m.
The paintings in Warped Side are a cumulation of the friendship and collaboration between Halloran and Thorne to mobilize science, art, and poetry to explore
The exhibition features a selection of paintings published in the book alongside new larger-scaled works representing an expanded view of each chapter in the book.
Halloran engenders an intimate and empathetic approach to storytelling through the figurative portrayal of her wife, Felicia, who is depicted throughout the epic narrative in the heroic role of a space traveler, braving through the probabilities of wormholes and perils of black holes. Throughout the sequence of paintings, Felicia’s humanity bridges distant concepts closer to home, a parallel to Thorne’s poetic verse. In this respect, the project presents an intimate experience of our universe’s knowns and unknowns.
Over the years, Halloran has employed painting techniques in conversation with visual mediums associated with research and scientific studies — from photography to cyanotypes to drafting paper. In these works, Halloran uses ink on drafting film to achieve a range of indigos, cyans, and blues that animate the sublime characteristics of the cosmos and celestial abstractions. With gravity in play, the ink realizes a range of opacities from the densities of black holes to pulsating galaxies and the many dimensions of the human form.
To celebrate the opening of the exhibition and launch of the book, a limited edition signed print by Lia Halloran will be produced. Titled, Everything in Our Universe, 17 x 25 in., archival pigment print on Sommerset paper will be on display in the gallery’s viewing room.
Lia Halloran was born in 1977 in Chicago, IL, and lives and works in Los Angeles. Halloran received a BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999 and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2001. She is the recipient of various awards including a 2021 residency at Caltech/ Huntington Program, a C.O.L.A Master Art Fellowship in 2020; 2018 LUX Art Institute Artist Residency and exhibition, Encinitas, CA; 2018 Artist Residency at the American Natural History Museum Astrophysics Department, New York, NY; 2018 Pioneer Works Artist in Residency, Brooklyn, NY; and a 2016 Art Works Grant from the National Endowment of the Arts for the project Your Body is a Space that Sees. Halloran’s work is held in the public collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Escalette Permanent Collection of Art, Chapman University, Orange, CA; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, FL; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX; Speyer Family Collection, New York, NY; Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, OH; Microsoft Art Collection, San Francisco, CA; Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Boston, MA; Simons Foundation, New York; among others. Solo exhibitions of Halloran’s work have been held at the Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA; ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA; University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, MD; LUX Art Institute, Encinitas, CA; Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Caltech, Pasadena, CA (permanent installation); the Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR, and in partnership with the LA Department of Cultural Affairs, large scale installations at LAX Terminal 1 and Terminal 3, Los Angeles, CA; among others. Halloran has been profiled in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, ArtNews, and New York Magazine.
The Warped Side of Our Universe: An Odyssey through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves by Lia Halloran and Kip Thorne, published by Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton Company, New York, was released October 31, 2023. The book is available for purchase on Amazon and other bookstores. A limited number of signed books will be available for purchase at the gallery.