Artist: Rema Ghuloum

Philip Martin Gallery presents “Atmospheres,” its first solo exhibition of paintings by Arab-American, Los Angeles-based artist Rema Ghuloum. As Ghuloum's show title suggests, her paintings are atmospheric, engaging pictorial and narrative instincts, optical sensation and proprioceptive awareness.

Rema Ghuloum’s medium and large scale oil-on-canvas works are produced over weeks and months of studio practice. Ghuloum works in layers, initially covering the canvas with paint applied with traditional tools - like brushes - and non-traditional ones - like spray and squeeze bottles. Ghuloum then sands the layers to create subtle gradations of deep painterly space. This space appears to stretch away from the viewer to infinity; at the same time, the viewer is physically oriented by a 'frame’ of brushstrokes that run up, down and side-to-side in narrow bands at the top, bottom and side edges of the canvas.

The optical sense in Ghuloum's atmospheres plays off the physicality of these frames. The tactile raised, painterly marks of the frame invite the viewer’s touch; the atmosphere of the picture points to deep painterly space. The viewer feels a space into which their mind might travel optically, as well as the gravity of the actual space in which they stand.

There is a sense of openness and mystery in Ghuloum’s work. There is a feeling of the known and the unknown. Her paintings have a sense of the intense emotion of American painter Mark Rothko and the healing instinct of Swiss artist Emma Kunz. There is also a sense of displacement and erasure that comes perhaps in part from Ghuloum’s own experience as an American of Lebanese descent.

Ghuloum notes the careful mood of Etel Adnan, a landmark Northern California artist who used painting and poetry as keys to express inner feeling. The lives of Etel Adnan and Ghuloum's own grandmother overlap in many ways: born the same year, each fled Lebanon as refugees of war - Ghuloum's grandmother first from Haifa in 1948 - and then like Adnan, from Beirut. Adnan writes,

Clouds pile up,
turn into human
forms
on riverbeds
the same inscription
always dissolves,
then reappears,
as the sky has
already told me.

A Reiki healer, Ghuloum moves energy in her paintings. With this energy she finds the gravity of the painting. Sensing this energy, the viewer finds their own gravity, too. We get out of these works what we put into them. Rema Ghuloum invites us on a journey; to participate in an exchange between maker and viewer; to consider our own experiences and those of the people around us; to think about what we want for ourselves, for each other, and the world in which we live.

Rema Ghuloum (b. 1978, North Hollywood, CA) received her BFA in Drawing and Painting from California State University, Long Beach (Long Beach, CA) in 2007 and her MFA from California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA) in 2010. Recent projects include "The Sky Has a Thousand Windows" (Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA) and "When the Day is Done" (David De Boer, Antwerp, Belgium). Recent institutional projects include, "Color Fields" (2023, Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA) and "Shaping Gravity: Art Beyond the Picture Plane" (2023, Forest Lawn Museum, Los Angeles, CA). In 2022, Ghuloum was included in “The Holographic Principle” at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). Solo exhibitions include Et al. (San Francisco, CA); Emma Grey HQ (Los Angeles, CA); Edward Cella Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Five Car Garage (Santa Monica, CA); Sargent’s Daughters (New York, NY); Contemporary Art Matters (Columbus, OH); Hawthorn Contemporary (Milwaukee, WI); Jacob’s (Los Angeles, CA) and Sonce Alexander Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). Group exhibitions include The Pit (Los Angeles, CA); Make Room (Los Angeles, CA); La Loma Projects (Los Angeles, CA); Odd Ark LA (Los Angeles, CA); Part 2 Gallery (Oakland, CA); Harris Gallery, University of Laverne (Laverne, CA); Five Car Garage (Santa Monica, CA); Nathalie Karg (New York, NY); Mother Gallery (Beacon, NY); Taymore Grahne Projects (London, UK); Meyer Reigger (Berlin, Germany) and Baik Gallery (Seoul, Korea). Ghuloum’s work is included in the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts Works on Paper Collection at the Legion of Honor Museum (San Francisco, CA). Ghuloum’s work has been reviewed in Art Forum, Hyperallergic, CARLA, the Los Angeles Times, Fabrik, and LA Weekly. Ghuloum lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.