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Holton Rower is known for his “pours,” artworks made by pouring successive colors of opaque, viscous paint onto a wood surface, letting a pattern be formed by the way the paints layer upon themselves and the way the imperfections of the wood shapes theflow. His currently open exhibit at The Hole in New York City features seven new Pour Paintings, vivid with underwater shades of blue and aqua.
They’re a perfect fit in the pool-like blue-and-white of The Hole’s gallery, evoking seashells with their crenelated, almost iridescent shapes and hues. Cut out on thick plywood backings, each in its own unique shape, they line the outer wall of the gallery’s single room.
Inside their border are his newer creations, the Squirms. While the Pours have a single point of origin or perhaps two, the Squirms are made of paint poured dollop by dollop in a curvilinear line, creating motion and a sense of something quite alive. There is a sense of travel, as if the viewer sinks into all that color at one end and travels along it, ring by ring, to be released at the other.
Vivid, saturated color is a constant in Rower’s works, seeming almost to vibrate off the walls. From the gravity-drawn organic tree-like rings of the Pours to the flexible sci-fi precision of the Squirms, it’s obvious that both sprang from the hand and eye of the same artist. Even the name of the exhibit is a statement that one grew from the other. Where will his remarkable style grow next?
PSQUIRMOUR will remain on view in The Hole, 312 Bowery New York, NY, through August 9th.