DCKT Contemporary is pleased to present LIA HALLORAN’s third New York solo exhibition. The exhibition includes new paintings of crystal caves and personified icebergs, along with ink on vellum works. HALLORAN uses science and the natural world to map out physical and psychological spaces in her painting and addresses time in ways that stretch our notions of perception.

HALLORAN’s paintings of crystal caves explore a submerged space that is finite and bounded. The paintings accentuate the unreal quality of crystal formations and the claustrophobic environments of caves. A sense of disorientation merges with the inanimate and the imagery examines discernable entropy and decay. The environments are impossible and chaotic; the spaces are both beautiful and terrifying. The works are based on last decade’s discovery of the Cueva de los Cristales in Naica, Mexico where monumental selenite crystals reaching over thirty-five feet long look more like architectural beams than mineral growth.

HALLORAN’s paintings of personified icebergs embody rapidly shifting and transforming existence. The icebergs become a metaphor of the complexities of personal intimacy and separation. The work illuminates ideas of surface and transparency and offers the opportunity to view many layers simultaneously. There is an assertion and self- reflective quality in the paint handling, where movement and crystallization of the paint references the larger structure of the iceberg.

A catalogue of the exhibition, with essay by Kristina Newhouse, will be available. Also on view will be editioned ‘crystal chandeliers’ produced in collaboration with Sarah Strauss of Bigprototype.

HALLORAN lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work was recently acquired by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York). Group exhibitions include Superficiality and Superexcresence at Ben Maltz Gallery (Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles) and Ultrasonic International III at Mark Moore Gallery (Santa Monica, CA). She is a 2001 MFA graduate of the Yale University School of Art.