miart

When Leon Battista Alberti theorized rules of perspective and ideals of painting in De Pictura (1435), he compared the rectangular painting to the frame of a window, implying that the viewer should have a firm place to stand and perceive a scene. Today, the metaphor of the window is often applied to the screens we use to navigate the world, but how exactly do we find our footing?

On Google Earth, we can simulate a walk down the street or fly overhead with a bird’s eye view, going anywhere, at least virtually. Olivia Hill’s paintings of Southern Californian climes capture the dizzying effect of zooming in and out on a digital map, but also the vertiginous experience of driving fast through a canyon in the fading light. Hill depicts a ‘viewpoint’ along highway roads scarred by tire burnout marks, a landslide in the Hollywood hills, a man-made pond on Mammoth Mountain for making snow, and a sand castle melting into the sea.

Hill shows how the nearly imperceptible changes in the scenery around us can intensify very quickly, producing spectacular effects. For example, in Drift, Turnout on Angeles Crest Highway, 34°15’33.4”N 118°11’47.6”W (2023), the eye moves from a textured foreground of grainy desert-steppe, to a half-moon of winding highway, and into blue mountains that seem to change shape in the sunset. She achieves this through a strategic combination of tightly rendered formations and expressive marks, splattering and pouring paint, even tilting the canvas to create unsettling spills and marbling that reads as nothing short of seismic.

In Landslide on Sleepy Hollow Drive, 34°08’58.9”N 118°12’38.6”W (2023), a preserved castle provides the backdrop for an ordinary family home with a sandy driveway slipping into oblivion, evoking the longing for something solid while simultaneously the foundation shifts. Although the landscapes have steadying horizon lines, we are not on stable ground. Hill’s new series creates a sensation of spinning out of control, deliberately.

Olivia Hill (b. 1985, Hinsdale, Illinois) lives and works between Los Angeles and Yucca Valley. Hill received an MFA from University of California, Riverside (2020) and a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2006). Recent exhibitions include Strike-Slip, Bel Ami, Los Angeles, CA (2022); Storm Before the Calm,Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, CA (2022); A Fool’s Game Played By Cowards, As It Stands, Los Angeles, CA (curated by Kinder, NY with Aria Dean) (2022); A Somewhat Thin Line, In Lieu Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2022); Psycho Geology, Bendix Building, Los Angeles, CA (curated by Anna Elise Johnson) (2022); and No Matter What, MFA thesis exhibition at JOAN, Los Angeles, CA (2021).