Voltz Clarke is pleased to present Eternal current, an exhibition of new paintings by New York artist Field Kallop. Kallop’s third solo show with the gallery will feature a dozen paintings, including several at a new, larger scale for the artist.

Kallop’s luminous, saturated paintings claim space in the wide-open field of geometric abstraction, across a terrain reaching from ancient sacred geometries to the hard edges of color theory. The works in Eternal current gesture simultaneously toward scientific illustration, mystical visions, and color field painting. They invite us to reconsider the dichotomy between science and spiritualism: each is a quest to understand that which we can’t observe, and to image the unseen. So to ask whether Field Kallop’s paintings are rooted in transcendentalism or mathematics, in color theory or in tantra, we can simply answer: yes.

Kallop always begins her compositions with a grid, over which she lays a second-order set of geometries: circles, arcs, waves, and rays. These shapes are carefully drawn in a diagrammatic process. But within a system governed by self-imposed rules, Kallop finds room for painterly incident and idiosyncrasy: a wavering human hand is always detectable just beyond the relentless precision of her work. Her simplified forms are rich with symbolic potential, but the paintings foreground the perceptual possibilities of painting.

Kallop uses acrylic paint in highly diluted washes with a diffuse quality almost like watercolor. This method allows her to paint in multiple, diaphanous layers, suspending particles of pigment in glazes to give each color depth and dimension. Sometimes the paint is left translucent enough that the raw canvas shows through beneath it, and sometimes it’s built up in so many layers that it practically glows. Her palette is prismatic, using the colors of pure light across the visible spectrum.

In Cosmic rhythm (II), each square of a grid is divided diagonally, giving each square the appearance of a folded and unfolded piece of paper. This grid makes up a color spectrum - not a mere color chart, but a vibrating, pulsating field of light. Punctuating this grid are a number of half-circles, alternating on either side of diagonal axes. These half-moon forms call to mind planetary rotations and an unseen order inherent in the natural world.

In Deep transit, a large circle touches each of the four sides of the canvas, either filling the picture or opening a portal within it. A vertical stack of circles makes a column down the painting’s center, while shimmering rays radiate out from either side. Tiny white dots bifurcate the central form and create an inner circle – suggesting data markers on a chart, or points on a map. Like much of Kallop’s work, the painting asks both to be read like a cypher and experienced like a phenomenon.

The title Eternal Current is taken from poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s First elegy. Elsewhere in the Elegy, Rilke exclaims: “how little at home we are in the interpreted world”: a fitting prompt to experience these dazzling, mysterious paintings on their own terms.

Kallop received her Master of Fine Arts from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2011, and her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University in 2004. A recipient of multiple awards and residencies, Kallop has been an Artist in Residence at The Andy Warhol Preserve in Montauk, NY, and has exhibited widely, most notably at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, PA. A New York native, Kallop currently lives and works in downtown Manhattan.