“As the ground luminosity dawns at death, an experienced practitioner will maintain full awareness and merge with it, thereby attaining liberation.”
—Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Altman Siegel is pleased to present The ground, an exhibition of new paintings marking Liam Everett’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. Engaging with questions regarding the influence of authorship, environment, and collective consciousness, this new body of work represents a significant aesthetic shift for the artist evolving from moments of chaos, growth, and discomfort. Atmospheric and layered, Everett’s paintings search for and amplify a sense of ambiguity, seeking the obliteration of ego.

Like the stage, which is easily manipulated by light and space, Everett’s paintings are mutable to their surroundings. Shifting as the light changes throughout the day, they appear subtly transformed from moment to moment. Their varnished surfaces reflect light, creating a transparency that allows the paintings to generate their own luminosity, suggesting a certain quality of light that is uniquely specific to the marine layers and coastal landscape of Northern California, where they are made. At the borders of many of the works, raw canvas serves as a referential point – a reminder of the illusion of depth, and a glimpse of the many layers of color embedded in the dense surfaces. Like the moment at the end of a play when the house lights come up, revealing that each set was built upon a stage, these swaths of empty space serve as both a register and reminder that Everett’s paintings are born from a lineage of repetitive actions.

In contrast to previous series in which color and gesture flowed from one work into the next, these paintings evolved one at a time, with Everett taking on the role of custodian. This approach allows him to create situations in which the materials of the painting interact in ways that he sets in motion but does not overtly control. Building layers of ink, oil, and sand, one on top of the next, he allows the caustic materials to assert themselves, slowly reacting to one another. Through sequences of events and repetitions, these materials create unique environments on the surface of the canvas, spurring processes of procreation and diminishing the hand of the maker. Because they do not come from any source or reference, Everett does not consider the resulting works abstractions. Rather, his new paintings offer unique, regenerative moments, encompassing the interconnectedness of our environment.

Altman Siegel