Ascent
Words by Eva McGovern
For her latest solo at Art Informal, Lui Medina continues to explore the relationships between objects and paintings via the tensions of space. Creating visually sublime wall bound objects as well as geologically inspired forms she focuses on processes of transformation and what takes shape within these moments of change. Expressing the potential and contradiction of being, her works necessarily alternate between sculpture/painting or hybrid other due to the metaphysical and physical spaces they inhabit. These encounters and interrogations then become a purposeful landscape of shifting forms which both the artist and her audience must locate themselves within.
As the viewers, we are encouraged to negotiate the visual illusion of Medina's forms as well as their seductive materiality. Her oval and circular works suggest the romance of celestial forms or the all consuming collapse of black holes. However, they are also informed by processes of abstraction through a rhythmic application of paint and color. In addition, Medina’s visceral three dimensional works and drawing have been inspired by various geological formations and crystals that have been cast and reformed into painted objects. Referencing 'isostasy' or the gravitational equilibrium between the earth’s lithosphere and asthenosphere where the tectonic plates ‘float’ at an elevation this investigation into the inner machinations of the earth, provides an important entry point into Medina’s characteristic philosophical inquiries.
For the past few years the artist has been interested in communicating the aesthetic qualities of the sublime and the transcendent. However, although Ascent suggests the journey towards artistic enlightenment, what Medina is most interested in the different frictions realised along the way. By purposefully working within the push and pull of opposites she shares the hypnotic qualities of space and form in states of progression that attempt to undermine the fixed definitions of art. Ranging from the flatness of her drawing, through to the intense depths of paintings that stretch towards sculpture and sculptures that want to be paintings what emerges are the different energies and possibilities of creativity in flux.
