It Took This Long To Get Here
It Took This Long To Get Here
November 1st - November 30th, 2019
It Took This Long To Get Here features the newest series of paintings by Olive Moya. The bold graphic colorscapes, defined edges, line-work and movement hint at Moya’s background in illustration and lettering. She most recently describes her paintings as “abstract storytelling,” influenced by how Frank Stella described his own work, saying: “[Abstraction] could have a geometry that had a narrative impact. In other words, you could tell a story with the shapes.” Each of Moya’s works are a push and pull between intuition and control. It is a performance by and for the artist, reflecting identity back on oneself to simulate comfort and stability in the face of fear and loss of control.
Moya pairs the soft consoling colors of her childhood with the vivid influence of her early-adulthood in Los Angeles. The pale turquoise of the wallpaper in her childhood kitchen, or the faded nostalgic hues of Disney films on VCR against saturated primaries, striking yellow-greens and hot pinks. Cloud-like organic shapes float across her panels, clustering around each other and are sometimes interrupted by sharp black pathways referential of Keith Haring and of Cy Twombly’s blackboard drawings. Each pair of black lines can be twisted and angry, slow and methodical, meandering, decisive, or stuttering- all layering atop each other and the dreamlike colorful background. Some pieces exist only as vivid pathways tangled, layered, and overwhelming. The work often incorporates one or more clean shifts, giving the impression of a changing timeline, comic strip or storyboard. Each piece can be the portrayal of a single moment, or a recounting of a transformation over years.
The titles of the paintings are gathered from various movie subtitle descriptions. Each title suggests that there is something in the work that the viewer has not heard or noticed and therefore overlooked. Furthermore, pulling from subtitles represents a chain of carefully curated versions of a story- the theatrics of the music, background noise, and non-dialogue character sounds that construct a specific understanding of what is being viewed. Moya pairs these sometimes humorous decontextualized parenthetical phrases such as “Rustling Continues” and “Slurping Loudly” with her pieces in an attempt to discuss our relationship with our own perceived identity. Often, we quickly we simultaneously neglect the truths of fear, failure, sadness and rejection and then fill it in idly in an attempt to comfort and control. The titles are also a nod to the artist’s relationship to humor in language, lettering, and text that lacks a visual presence in It Took This Long To Get Here.
Olive Moya grew up Southern California and currently lives and works in Denver, Colorado. She attended Otis College of Art + Design in Los Angeles, studied a combination of Fine Arts and Communication Arts, and received her BFA in 2011. After relocating to Denver, she began showing her work and painting murals both public and private commission.