EJ Hauser: Mountains and Peaks
February 11 - March 18, 2023
“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
–Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Parrasch Heijnen is pleased to present the gallery’s first exhibition with Brooklyn-based artist EJ Hauser (b. 1967, Peru, IL).
EJ Hauser’s work is defined by its percussive mark-making, layered and scraped, connecting with impressions of natural world phenomena. There is an urgency carried throughout Hauser’s distinct painting style translated through repetition, reflection, and revision. The artist’s process develops from an intuitive stratified ground to overlaid, offset gestures of methodical consideration.
In a duet with herself, Hauser synchronizes drawing with painting, eventually superimposing the two in digitized and analog notation. The inherent connection between her foundational drawings and her painting is fully realized as she interweaves both in this exhibition. Using varying scales and dimensions, both modes reflect automation and swiftness along with an interplay of poetic form and recognizable figures. In a cross-pollination, the works grow with one another, literally and cohesively, each thought enhancing the next with added layers of embedded meaning.
Hauser’s extensive index of forms––mountains, animals, spirits, waves or peaks, lyrical phrases, moon seeds––lives within the same fabricated world as a figment of harmonious connective tissue. A fluidity is visible in Blue Deep Thinking (2023) as waves meld into peaks in the effervescent atmosphere atop breathing mountains. The artist personifies each figure and form, imbuing them with life and emotion.
Throughout her career, Hauser has been accumulating a personal index of abstract symbolism. In Mountains and Peaks, she creates her own spectral cordillera throughout space, a psychedelic trek for the topography of the mind. Silver rubbed with hints of color becomes an alchemical base for many of the artist’s paintings. In Orchard Thinking (2022), metaphorical moon seeds are found germinating above or below mountain tops, illuminating the preciousness and expansiveness of our existence.
There is a palpable transfer of energy between Hauser’s quick and intuitive drawings and her considered painting, interlacing pattern and color. These reverberations respond to their surroundings in sonic notation of waves and grooves, floating through liminal space. As markers of energy, Hauser’s paintings return viewers to their point of conception. They function as time vessels, a burst of vibrancy that exists in an ever present.
EJ Hauser lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Hauser received a BFA from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA in 1991 and an MFA from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC in 1998. She is a recipient of the 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize. Hauser has been selected as the Fall 2023 Teiger Mentor in the Arts at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Hauser has shown extensively throughout the United States and Europe, including Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY; Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY; Haverkampf Leistenschneider, Berlin, DE; Sperone Westwater, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; Participant Inc., New York, NY; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, NY; Cheim & Read, New York, NY; The Journal Gallery, New York, NY; AWHRHWAR, Los Angeles, CA; The Breeder, Athens, GR; The Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC and Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. EJ Hauser is represented by Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY.
EJ Hauser: Mountains and Peaks, will be on view at parrasch heijnen, 1326 S. Boyle Avenue, Los Angeles, from February 11 – March 18, 2023 with an artist reception on Saturday, February 11, 5-7 p. Gallery staff are available to guide you through our exhibitions virtually via Zoom upon request. For more information, please contact the gallery at +1 (323) 943-9373 or info@parraschheijnen.com.
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