Artist: Lia Halloran

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles presents Lia Halloran: Night Watch, the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery and official PST Art: Art & Science Collide Gallery Program.

Lia Halloran: Night Watch presents a new series of paintings capturing the passage of time across multiple scales—whether through the movement of star trails, the changing of seasons, or the Earth’s steady orbit around the sun. The paintings create a visual dialogue between the mechanical and the natural, from the cyclical nature of the seasons and, the gradual transformation of landscapes, using colors and textures to evoke the season's changes. Referencing the iconic “Device” works of Jasper Johns, this series investigates the many mechanisms that symbolize the passage of time.

Using dynamic marks and textures, Halloran’s paintings envisage evolving landscapes, creating a dialogue between movement and change. Time is portrayed as cyclical and expansive, rather than linear, with each painting reflecting the interplay of visible and unseen forces that drive its passage. The compositions evoke a sense of fluidity, where time spirals, shifts, and expands, capturing the gradual changes in nature, celestial motion, and geological processes.

Halloran’s imagined landscapes transcend the visible, representing the ethereal and mysterious forces that move through nature and the cosmos. The non-representational color palette vibrates with the energy of these active macrocosms, emphasizing the inherent connection between time, light, and movement, provoking viewers to contemplate the rhythms and cycles that govern our world.

Lia Halloran (b.1977, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Halloran received a BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999 and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2001. She is the recipient of various awards including a C.O.L.A Master Art Fellowship in 2020; 2018 LUX Art Institute Artist Residency and exhibition, Encinitas, CA; 2018 Artist Residency at the American Natural History Museum Astrophysics Department, New York, NY; 2018 Pioneer Works Artist in Residency, Brooklyn, NY; and a 2016 Art Works Grant from the National Endowment of the Arts for the project Your Body is a Space that Sees. + KIP THORN BOOK? Halloran’s work is held in the public collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Center for Astrophysics l Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA; Harvard College Observatory and Harvard Plate Stacks, Cambridge, MA; Escalette Permanent Collection of Art, Chapman University, Orange, CA; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX; Speyer Family Collection, New York, NY; Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, OH; Microsoft Art Collection, San Francisco, CA; Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Boston, MA; Simons Foundation, New York; among others. Solo exhibitions of Halloran’s work have been held at LAX Terminal 1 and Terminal 3, Los Angeles, CA; Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA; ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA; University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, MD; LUX Art Institute, Encinitas, CA; Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Caltech, Pasadena, CA (permanent installation); and the Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; among others.