FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Through December 4, 2004

Opening Reception:
Thursday November 4, 7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.

ALAN LOEHLE

November 4 - December 4, 2004

Marcia Wood Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition of figurative oil paintings and drawings by Alan Loehle, the gallery’s first exhibition of new work from Loehle since 1999. Viewers who are acquainted with Loehle’s past work will immediately connect with the six new canvasses on display in this exhibition, while those who may be unfamiliar with the artist’s commanding presence and masterful precision, or the thoughtful poetry of his drawings on paper, will be struck by the singular imagery, vocabulary and intensity of Loehle’s artwork.

The overriding concern of these works is, as the artist states, “to address issues of the human condition, such as awareness of mortality, the physical body, and unattainable desire.” Loehle’s work intends to instill a feeling of empathy engendered by pathos, an expression of the simultaneous experiences of loss, desire, belief and possibility hidden within the seeming “otherness” of Loehle’s subject matter – a collection of imagery which in fact functions as a counterpoint to our own consciousness. The precise composition of Loehle’s finished work on canvas is arrived at over the course of many months, in a process – telling glimpses of which can be felt in the spare and thoughtful drawings represented in the exhibition – that Loehle says seeks to infuse the work with the inner logic of abstraction while referring more directly to the world by using a representational vocabulary. Again in the artist’s words: “If there is a common denominator in my work, it is that life matters, and that art can be a place where issues of the spirit and mind can be distilled into a dense and complex experience.”

Alan Loehle lives in Atlanta, GA, and had his first solo exhibition in Atlanta in 1989. He has won numerous awards and fellowships, and his work is in the collections of museums nationwide. William Zimmer, contributing art critic to The New York Times, wrote in 1999 that “Alan Loehle’s gift is that he can fit a large vision into a painterly scheme which he has narrowed into a blade.”