Downtown, Los Angeles
Zoe Walsh
Outsides
VielmetterVielmetter Los Angeles is excited to present Outsides, a Spotlight of new works by Los Angeles-based artist Zoe Walsh. In conjunction with the exhibition, a conversation between Zoe Walsh and artist Linda Besemer takes place, immediately preceding the opening reception. Comprising of four paintings, Walsh's newest works continue their investigation into the possibilities of representing queer subjectivity in charged ecologies, conflating foreground, background, exteriority, and interiority. Walsh's paintings are a confluence of light, space, color, and form that interrogate the medium itself and simultaneously question the stability and legibility of images. Working across digital rendering, hand-stenciling, print-making, and painting, Walsh's works merge material approaches while remaining rooted in the act of painting. The resulting works are studies in the terms of visibility and locating meaning, informed by trans subjectivity, and are rendered in brilliant hues of blues, purples, magentas, and greens. Throughout the compositions, Walsh merges images of contemporary figures - their friends, or themselves, for instance - alongside quotations of images from Pat Rocco, a queer photographer and activist who worked in Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s. This cross-generational image play is not immediately evident as Walsh's figures are intentionally rendered as shadowy, transient, and unfixed in the landscapes they inhabit. Walsh's technique of layering images through their stenciling and screen-printing process allows for a blending of surfaces, forms, and figures that evoke a convergence of time and space. Just when the image begins to become fixed, a slippage presents itself and details shimmer on the surface, coming in and out of focus. This approach evokes a perceptual in-between, leaving room for subjectivity in meaning and relational ambiguity that occupies a space between legibility and abstraction. Zoe Walsh (b. 1989; Washington, D.C.) is a Los-Angeles-based artist holding an MFA from Yale University and BA from Occidental College. Walsh has mounted solo and two-person exhibitions at Yossi Milo, New York, NY; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Pieter Performance Space, Los Angeles, CA; and Fondation des États-Unis, Paris, France, among others. Walsh's work has been featured in group exhibitions at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; USC Fisher Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Peppers Art Gallery, Redlands, CA; Usdan Gallery, Bennington, VT; La Maison des Arts, Malakoff, France; Abrons Art Center, New York, NY, and UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA. In 2019, the artist was a nominee for the Emerging Artist Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and received the Al Held Foundation Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome, Italy. In 2024, Walsh was awarded a residency at Fountainhead in Miami.