Closeup

A Touch of Iridescence

Cry Freedom, 1996, Acrylic on Canvas, 76 x 56 cm. One in a set of four - Price: £ 2,400, the set	On the occasion of Elisabeth Lalouschek's sixth solo show at the October Gallery, it becomes possibleto chart, in retrospect, the critical points marking the development of a singular talent during some two decades of experimentation, innovation and transformation. The overall line of development plots a marked transition from the early large-scale figurative work done in oils to a gestural expressionism based on the abstract use of highly coloured acrylics. These exciting new canvases confirm that Lalouschek has now attained a practised ease and spontaneity of expression, and that her habit of working directly on the canvas with no preliminary sketching has matured into a free-flowing gestural style which remains, inimitably, her own.
Lalouschek's early work - which attracted much critical attention as she graduated from the Royal College of Art, in 1983 - concentrated on the male torso. Oversized canvases on which bare-chested, muscular bikers posed and preened themselves upon their gleaming metal mounts bespoke a world freighted with an underlying erotic tension, hinting at broad themes of dominance, bondage and the fetishistic transferences of male desire. On the strength of these self-confidently assertive oil paintings, Lalouschek was invited to present her first show at the October Gallery that same year. Thus began the long association that has seen her move from first-time exhibiting artist to Artistic Director in her own right, a position of influential authority allowing her to develop her own artistic career even as she promotes the careers of others.	Symphysis Blues, 1992, Acrylic on Canvas,
Another Country, 2001, 106 x 184 cm, Acrylic on Canvas, - £ 2,250.	The years following graduation saw Lalouschek travelling overseas, spending time in the United States and Mexico and eventually accepting a scholarship to study in Paris. It was the time spent in Puerta Vallarta, on Mexico's Pacific coast, that most influenced the progress of her work during this period. The striking colours of the shifting sea and sky, irradiated by a dazzling sun, the rich earth-tones of the land itself and the brilliant hues accompanying each evening's sunset drenched her palette with a fiery range of colours ranging from brightest orange to deepest violet. Set amongst these swirling primaries the male torso still features, a reminder of earlier concerns, giving a human point of reference upon which to focus attention. Though now no longer the central actor in a thrilling drama matching man against machine, these later figures operate more as a motif, part of the play of symbolic elements, spirals, circles and triangular lines that fracture the picture plane into discrete zones of concern. Within these cut-up planes could be glimpsed, in embryo, the highly mobile clouds, obscuring suns and moons, and other abstract landscapes soon destined to usurp the canvases' centre stage. A line from a poem penned in Puerta Vallarta "the sky: racing clouds torn from huge coloured sheets," suggests that Lalouschek was already aware of the floating masses of colour that were to occupy her next.
In attempting to do justice to those vivid fields of colour captured each evening on the canvas of the skies, Lalouschek began to experiment using pastel crayons and later acrylics, both of which exploit inherent reflective properties to suggest an interior luminosity. When used on heavy black paper the pastels, as well as increasing the contrastive qualities of the colour, had the added effect of supplying textured depth and definition to the stroke allowing a range of different effects, especially where the black background seemed to seep through the vibrant foreground colour. Valuable lessons learnt here would later be applied to the acrylic works on canvas, where, as in Cosmic Blues II, the inky ground is suggestive of the vast reaches of space against which the nebulous veils of interstellar clouds are highlighted.	Silence, 2001, 106 x 184 cm, Acrylic on Canvas, - £ 2,250.
Upward Movement, 2001, 50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on Canvas - £250.	By the time of her 1992 exhibition of paintings and pastels the transformation to abstraction was complete. Gone were the symbols and all straight lines, and the cloudscapes that had supplied the shifting background sceneries to the statuesque heads and torsos of earlier years now occupied the entire canvas, becoming the fluid subject of the work itself. Looking at these canvases one senses that the artist has discoverd a new freedom to invent. A new task had been identified: a rigorous examination of the transformational grammar of colour, using the vocabulary of natural forms. Layered swatches of colour suggested complex cloud compositions, the subtly shifting tonal sequences tingeing the edges of the rounded shapes, lending depth and mystery to the diversityof forms. Inventive titles such as Moonwater, Night Journey and Lotus were pressing invitations, urging the viewer to take similarly imaginative leaps into a world of creative visualisation.
The intervening years of research have seen Lalouschek's already formidable sense of colour broaden and expand to a point where she is capable of making colours that oughtn't work together, do just that, and strikingly so, by the introduction of a third, a mediator that acts as a catalyst in this alchemical process. Besides this long apprenticeship in the realm of colouration, perhaps the single most important advance to the present is a growing facility with the shape of the broad strokes of colour themselves. It is not too much to suggest that in this area she has been subtly influenced by the work of many non-western artists with whom, in her professional capacity as a curator of exhibitions of exciting work from other cultures, she is constantly in contact. Of particular importance in this respect is the work of the Jordanian artist, Wijdan, whose colourful works of abstract Arabic calligraphy, give many subtle pointers. Again, from a calligraphic perspective, her early championing of the Japanese work of Kenji Yoshida and of the much younger Masahito Katayama are both fruitful sources of study as to the way the brush-stroke itself - it's power and continuity, it's life energy - becomes a vehicle for meaning. In these most recent works the electric intensity of the whole is the product of the emotional drama of the colour multiplied by the gestural vitality of the brushwork.	Parted Sky, 2001, 100 x 100 cm, Acrylic on Canvas, - £ 1,200.
Rupture of Time, 2001, 184 x 152, Acrylic on Canvas, - £3,500	Though some see Lalouschek's work as difficult, this is not, strictly speaking, the case, perhaps 'demanding' would be a better description. To stand in front of a Lalouschek painting requires that the viewer be prepared to react, demands an honest opinion as to just how this particular combination of colours and shapes affects the viewer at this particular time, involves some ability to scrutinise ones inner world, examining the feelings that arise, occasioned by the colours with which one is confronted. To read each painting thus necessitates some preparation, and then sufficient intropsection to catch the subtle shape of feelings that arise, the half-formed thoughts and associations, the moods that form in concert with the canvas. It is this which sets Lalouscheks art apart from the ordinary, and which, when sufficient time is taken to stand before a work, allows some of the inherent brilliance to act sympathetically - bringing both into a common resonance and lending the viewer, also, that magic touch of iridescence.