Contributed by Riad Miah / Artists often become domestic partners. It’s an iteration of human nature. For one person to be attracted to another who has a similar creative sensibility and lifestyle is normal and sensible. Well-known examples include Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso, and Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. While coupledom can be exhilarating for both partners, it can also be tense, competitive, and destructive. Linda Griggs and Allen Hansen had never considered showing together until settling on their current show at Equity Gallery, aptly titled “Feedback Loop.” They appear to have struck a healthy balance between separation and synergy.
Griggs is a representational painter whose work here consists of pools, some private but the majority public. The water is painted brightly blue, its surroundings darkly in umber and other earth-toned colors that at times appear to be underpainting. The hour usually seems to be at night or in late afternoon, the day having expired. The accented blue amid the reductive palette yields an unsettling feeling that borders on eerie. Some of the photographs on which the paintings are based were taken during the beginning of lockdown in New York. Chairs, stools, and inner tubes stand in for people, underlining uncertainty about where they have gone and what might have happened.
Hansen’s paintings are abstract compositions featuring dark, moody tones with bursts of bright color. Elliptical shapes are either carved into the paintings’ surfaces or formed through shifts in value, utilizing past layers of paint. The pictures sometime resemble floating celestial objects, recalling the earlier works of Lynn McCarty. They also evoke cells seen under a microscope. Then again, they may simply coalesce through the artist’s process, without conscious referents. He does not use brushes but rather gloved hands to make the paintings, moving the paint around the surface with his palms and fingers. Cy Twombly’s late works, which incorporate kindred imagery and motifs and were generated by a comparable process, come to mind.
At first glance, it is not clear why, at least aesthetically, these two artists’ paintings were shown together; they seem miles apart. Upon closer inspection and reflection, however, the connection gets clearer. On a formal level, Griggs’ pools resemble Hansen’s floating ellipses. The pools reflect light, and Hansen’s shapes sometimes seem to be responding to it. Griggs privileges water, buoyancy, and a place designed for relaxation, while recognizing that circumstances may get in the way of that. Hansen metaphorically cuts through that contingency by imparting direct intimacy to his process, literally touching the surfaces in painting them. Interaction, perhaps more, is ultimately evident.
“Linda Griggs & Allen Hansen: Feedback Loop,” Equity Gallery, 245 Broome Street, New York, NY. Through March 2, 2024.
About the Author: Artist and educator Riad Miah was born in Trinidad and Tobago and lives and works in New York City. He has exhibited with Lesley Heller Workspace, Rooster Gallery, and Sperone Westwater Gallery. His 2023 solo show was at Equity Gallery in New York.
Thanks for this perceptive review. I have been following the work of these artists for years, and it was a delight to see their work together, with Allen’s subtle abstractions calling out to Linda’s vivid reaism, and vice-versa.
Linda Griggs and Allen Hansen are incredible artists. First, both of them create images that are thrilling and evocative. While Allen is abstract and Linda is figurative, they both use paint to grab our humanity in unexpected ways. In the two images above, Allen’s floating green splash is electric as it stands out from the black and inspires in the viewers in the gallery a feeling of a supernatural force. It’s a terrific painting and fits beautifully in his body of intriguing work.
Ask Linda about the pool painting above, as I did at the opening, and she will tell you about the Dad who wants to give his kids a good summer so he gets them an above ground pool. Even down to the faint round wet marks on the deck of the pool of a couple of beers.
Both are poets. This is an incredible show.
I just read the NYTimes article about Daddy Long Legs having 4 vestigial eyes in addition the two familiar ones.
So combining Linda and Allen’s realistic and abstract POVs made perfect sense to me for a split second,
as two of a possible of six views for a thirsty, backyard spider.
Saw these two on Instagram in the account of @meetcutesnyc and just felt like googling them. The account is by a guy who stops twosomes on the street, asks them if they are a couple, and then asks them how they met, what their favorite thing is about each other, what they’re looking forward to in life, and so on. Something about these two made me google them. I’m fascinated to find out they’re both artists.
Here’s the link to the story of how they met. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3x7TwpvgBp/?igsh=MWE5bjg5Z2E2bHRkcQ==