Have What
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART, LOS ANGELES
December 1, 2012–February 21, 2013In her new work, Larkey investigates the boundaries of language within a context of abstract painting, sculpture, and drawing. By hinting at a presence of language that never quite comes into being, she provides a slippage between looking and reading and questions how one sees (or reads) an object.
The paintings incorporate ceramic shapes on their surfaces, creating tension between flatness and volume, painted gesture and blocks of color, and symbolic language and the rawness of the materials. What seems at first glance to be a straightforward painted surface reveals itself over time to be layers of canvas, ceramics, and paint. Using these different materials and techniques to extract both solid forms and subtle gestures, the paintings confuse negative and positive space and yield lyrical shifts between the covering and the covered up.
Molly Larkey (b. 1971, Los Angeles) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received a MFA from Rutgers University, New Jersey, and a BA from Columbia University, New York. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at PS1 MoMA, New York; The Saatchi Gallery, London; The Drawing Center, New York; Horton Gallery, New York; Ochi Gallery, Ketchum; Samson Projects, Boston; and Bobbie Greenfield Gallery, Santa Monica among others.