Givan Lötz, UNEARTHLY: Landscape as Mindstate

AVA Long Gallery

Following residencies in Finland and New York, multi-disciplinary artist Givan Lötz brings his collection of otherworldly wax paintings and sculptures to the Association for Visual Arts Gallery from 23 January to 27 February 2020.

With inventive and pioneering use of the encaustic or wax painting technique, Lötz mines the primordial soup behind identifiable matter to produce alien scenes that seek to revive a sense of wonder in our surrounding natural world.

The collection of gestural, non-literal matterscapes avoid easy depiction and instead express a tacit dialogue between the subject matter and his emotional response to it. To this end, Lötz’s work riffs on the Michael Polanyi line: We can know more than we can tell. His approach abandons the idea of a supposedly realist picturesque depiction of the world, celebrating the indeterminate nature of a place filtered by the imperfect mind. 

These paintings and sculptures address both personal and global concerns as the artist probes at nature’s indifference, prowess and vulnerability and tracks its endless cycles of growth, decay, destruction and renewal.

I am looking to reference places of emotional resonance, reading a landscape to trace visual impressions. I am searching for enchantment in natural terrain. My aim has been to establish a personal visual shorthand—a painterly proficiency borne from tacit learning—enabling a gestural efficiency that echoes my internal logic.

Form and content are one in the way that paint naturally, fractally, echoes organic forms, the innate cycles of growth and decay. With my work I hope to trace a connection with the land itself through its hidden narratives of displacement and loss—a solace in the regenerative cycles of nature—binding outer place (landscape) and inner world (mindstate).