Innocence and Experience
Mimi Lauter at Blum & Poe, LA
Mysticism and spirituality has been one of the major tenets of art over the course of its long and winding history. When discussing these topics through the lens of the western canon, Catholicism and other iterations of Christianity defined this conversation for centuries. While that may have led to many iconic and beautiful examples of art, it certainly carried biases. The promotion of organized religion through art distracted from its many flaws and evils. This could include corruption, violent colonialism, and the oppression and discrimination of any other minority or dissenter. However, the artist Mimi Lauter provides us with a way forward with her new exhibition at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles called Sensus Oxynation. Through utilizing traditions grounded in western religion, Lauter gives us a form of spiritual thinking that is holistic, spiritual, and untethered to any one institution.
The show is comprised of two large galleries, which features sprawling drawings that are brightly colored and full of gestural marks. You are first greeted by works that are hung to recall monumental altarpieces of early modern Europe. Along with their physical presence, titles like Sensus Oxynation (Sunrise) and Sensus Oxynation (Apocalyptic Flood Landscape) make religious interpretation inevitable. Although, with this in mind, Lauter’s imagery is filled with color and light and abstracted forms of rushing water, flowers, water, and plenty more. These works have a liberty and energy that cannot be found in more formal Renaissance narratives done in tempera and gold leaf.
The second gallery contains smaller individual works, but they are just as vivid and captivating. Compared to the symmetry in the first gallery, these works seem even more loose and abstract. As individual works, these drawings seem more strange and psychological because they are entities unto themselves without the nod to altarpieces. If anything, these works recall less of Giotto, and more of the secular history of art. On a purely formal level, the scraped surfaces, expressive marks, and heavy reliance on color and pattern harkens back to the last quarter of the twentieth-century. Conceptually, Lauter owes a great deal to the poet and artist William Blake and the Symbolist movement. Not surprisingly, the press release states that the artist is very much influenced by artists like Odilon Redon and the French painters known as Les Nabis.
It is a savvy choice that Lauter connects herself to a rich variety of sources. Perhaps realizing that myth and spirituality must come from somewhere, she pays her dues to those have searched for some sort of enlightened state before her. Yet through this unique amalgamation of tropes and references, she has created a language and a history that is all her own.
Since Lauter made quasi-altarpieces, it would be fascinating to see her work outside of the white box of a gallery and in the serene architecture of a chapel. We know that artists can provide their viewers with profoundly moving and mysterious experiences when given the freedom to interpret their own doctrine (just think of Mark Rothko or Ellsworth Kelly). However, until that day comes, these beautiful drawings will have to suffice.
