B
orn in New York in 1990, Lucy Bull is a rising star in the contemporary art scene who currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Bull’s work is infused with a sense of chaos, yet the swirls of technicolour that make up her compositions are oddly soothing for the eye. A highlight of Lucy Bull's 2019 solo exhibition at the High Art Gallery in Paris, Time Beads reveals the transcendent brilliance of Bull’s painterly finesse. Featuring Bull’s mature style through its textured patterns and ebullient colors, the present work guides the viewer through the ebb and flow of the dreamlike experience that its composition evokes.
"Time is everything. I feel like a lot of the paintings function with a timed release. The layers start to shift and unravel, and the more you look, the more you start to see. In terms of their making, they are actually more process-driven than people realize. In order for the painting to move forward, I have to let whatever I’m seeing fall back. I want to leave room for different associations. Sometimes the paintings that come together too quickly don’t allow enough time for things to open up in a different way."
Balancing the chromatic vibrancy of colour field paintings by the likes of Alma Thomas, Helen Frankenthaler, or Sam Gilliam, Bull’s enigmatic paintings are the result of a careful mediation between precision and impulse. First employing loose brushwork, the artist then builds upon it, layer by layer, until she finally reaches a trance-like abstraction. This negotiation between materials draws the viewer into Bull’s accumulated process of creation, becoming progressively more lost in the hypnotic trance it induces. Taking somewhere between four to twenty layers of paint to create a work’s final surface, Bull meticulously builds up the layers and textures of a composition, to then employ reductive techniques like scratching away. As Bull has described, “It’s this combination of playing with the mark-making, and stamping it with the imprint of my brush and twisting it in weird ways,” Bull says.
The subject of solo exhibitions at David Kordansky Gallery, Human Resources and Smart Objects in Los Angeles, High Art in Arles and Paris and beyond, only four of Bull’s psychedelic artworks have been sold in auction, three being oil paintings.
1990年出生於紐約的露西·布爾是當代藝壇的年輕新秀，現於洛杉磯生活及工作。布爾的作品雖然給人混沌莫名的感覺，但那些色彩鮮艷的漩渦卻意外地在視覺上有療癒的效果。《Time Beads》是2019年巴黎High Art畫廊為布爾舉行的個展上的焦點作品，布爾精湛的繪畫技藝在這幅超塵脫俗的出色畫作中展露無遺。本作質感豐富的圖案及熱情洋溢的色彩體現了布爾已趨成熟的風格，畫面潮起潮落似的動感更為觀者帶來如夢似幻的體驗。
布爾的作品充滿神秘感，猶如萃取了阿爾瑪·托馬斯、海倫·弗蘭肯薩勒和山姆·吉利安等筆下的色域繪畫當中的繽紛生動，而且她更在精確縝密與隨心而發之間取得了精妙的平衡。布爾先以鬆散的筆觸作畫，再層層堆疊，直到畫面進入一種帶有冥想意味的抽象境界。藝術家以這種手法操控顏料，並引領觀者留意她重重複複的創作過程，令觀者進一步深陷畫作所帶來的催眠體驗之中。布爾先在畫布上堆疊起4至20層不等的顏料，構成畫面的層次及質感，再在其上以刮削等手法除掉部分顏料。布爾曾形容，她的作畫方式「糅合了不同技巧，把玩著痕跡創作、壓印畫筆和以獨特奇異的方式扭動畫筆等各種手法」。
露西·布爾曾於David Kordansky畫廊、洛杉磯Human Resources和Smart Objects 畫廊、法國亞爾和巴黎的High Art等多間畫廊舉辦個展。至今拍場上只出現過4幅布爾的迷幻畫作，其中3幅均為油畫作品。