Eva Struble: Gravity of Small Things

May 3 – June 22, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, May 3, 6 – 8 PM

Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present Gravity of Small Things, a solo exhibition of new works by California-based artist Eva Struble. Through painting and textile, Struble explores the concept of embodiment in the landscape, relating the physical act of making to her multi-sensory and visionary experience of place. Contemplating the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature, the works collectively take into consideration our changing environment.

Struble’s paintings distill her physical experience of nature – the sharp touch of Yucca on her local hikes, the early morning smell of the Chaparral, or the disorientation of floating above seagrass in the ocean. Orchestrating a suite of visual constructs, the artist oscillates between chance and control while experimenting with pigments, media, layering, and collaging. Her work suggests a reflective yet speculative vision teeming with biodiversity and notions of cohabitation between species without interference.

The eponymous painting Gravity of Small Things effortlessly blends hazy nostalgia with honest representation and creative world-building. Sharp and soft edges intermingle in shallow focus as the viewer moves through silhouetted trees and gradient purple obstructions flecked with blue and red confetti-like marks. The landscape is at once familiar and remote, existing outside of conventional constructs of time and space. Recognizable elements break up the variegated ecosystem, playing with our perception to reveal effects similar to sunlight illuminating the changing leaves or the sparkle of reflections dancing on the surface of the water.

Snapshots of landscapes morph into organic forms as Struble reconciles her visual and corporeal memories of nature with her own body’s shapes, twists, and turns. In Malajon,  layered washes of vibrant greens, blues, and pinks blend together to create a dynamic composition of varying depths, engaging our collective visual memory to suggest the ethereal entrance to an untouched cave, or perhaps a quiet adventure amidst jungle flora. As deliberate as it is exploratory, the artist’s otherworldly painterly manipulation gradually gives way to lend a semblance of reality to the abstracted composition. Drawing upon the viewer’s own experiences to evoke imaginative reflection, Struble’s works straddle the line between the human and natural worlds, simultaneously pushing and pulling to suggest alternative ways of coexisting.