Larissa Lockshin: Squall Line
Nazarian / Curcio is pleased to present Squall Line, a solo exhibition of new works by New York–based artist Larissa Lockshin. This marks Lockshin’s first presentation with the gallery and her Los Angeles debut. The exhibition will open on Saturday, January 10 and will be on view through February 14, 2026.
Taking its title from the meteorological phenomenon—a rapidly advancing corridor of storms capable of upending equilibrium—Squall Line approaches volatility as both subject and method. A squall line’s suddenness, its disorienting scale, and its ability to redraw terrain become metaphors for perceptual instability. Lockshin’s paintings channel this dynamic force, courting a state in which image, surface, and light seem to shift in real time.
Working on hand-dyed satin, Lockshin constructs scenes in which glints of light pierce through bowed grasses and elongated botanical forms, their contours warped as if caught in a passing surge of weather. The compositions appear to tilt, shimmer, and reorient depending on the viewer’s position and the natural fall of light. The effect is a visual oscillation, an insistence that the image resists settling.
Motifs recur across the exhibition: hearts, stars, petals, and trembling blades of grass drifting atop pearlescent fields. These elements hover between representation and trace, suspended against matte passages, vegetal smudges, and tender chromatic harmonies. Each work behaves like its own microclimate, an emotive register in transit, always on the cusp of transformation.
Lockshin’s process underscores this interplay of intention and contingency. Every component of the work, from surface and pigment to the frame, is made by hand. Satin is stretched over canvas and dyed with pigments she mixes and tests herself, establishing a mutable ground that retains the memory of its making. Onto this surface she applies soft pastel and oil pastel directly with her hands, allowing forms to emerge through pressure, drag, and dispersion. Once a composition is complete, Lockshin hand-builds each frame, extending the work’s material logic outward into its perimeter.
In Squall Line, Lockshin advances a vocabulary attuned to shifting states—meteorological, emotional, and perceptual. The exhibition proposes painting as a site of sensitivity, where images emerge not as fixed representations but as living, responsive phenomena. Through this lens, she invites viewers to encounter the works not as static objects but as weather systems in miniature: charged, luminous, and perpetually shifting.
Larissa Lockshin (b. 1992, Toronto, Canada; lives and works in Queens, NY) received her BFA in Painting from Parsons School of Design. She recently completed a 2025 Artist Residency with Ace Hotel Brooklyn, culminating in the solo exhibition Strawberries and Other Secrets. Recent solo presentations include Maya Frodeman Gallery, Jackson Hole (2024); Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona (2024); Europa Gallery, New York (2023); and Cob Gallery, London (2023). Her work has been featured in exhibitions at James Cohan Gallery, New York; Arsenal Contemporary, New York; Tyler Park Presents, Los Angeles; and Cob Gallery, Seoul, among others.
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