Gay Outlaw
Inner Sousaphone

Organized by Theadora Walsh
April 19 - June 1, 2024
Reception: Friday, April 19, 5:00 -8:00 p.m.

“My mom used this to bake biscuits,” Gay Outlaw says about a worn and blackened tin, warped by time to resemble softened leather and dyed that blackest of blacks by a thousand times in the broiler, crackling and elemental. She’d come into it from her mother’s home only recently, but the shape seemed to have never left her mind. I pointed out a painting on her studio wall: rectangular, layered, thick and black with a cracked line that resembled the pan perfectly, in both appearance and sentiment. “Strange!” Outlaw exclaimed. Overwhelmed by her capacity to hold attention to form, and excited to discover more similitude, I picked up a wedge of clay in her studio resembling a watermelon slice, and asked, “What’s this?”

“That,” Outlaw said authoritatively, “well that is a shape.”

Included in the back gallery are a group of prints made from eight linoleum blocks, each inked in shades of mauve, taupe, tan, and brown, of which Outlaw says: “they’re honest.” Pressed to clarify, she explains that they’re honest because she wants to show all the prints that she was physically able to make, the process of inking and hand printing being rigorous and somewhat less than precise. The prints, based on a photograph Outlaw took of a labradoodle's legs straddling a pile of wood-chips, are transpositions of light and shadow. I point to one’s intricate center, which struck me as molecular. After Outlaw took the photo, she realized that the dog’s furry chest reminded her of a mushroom cloud.

Outlaw’s work has an interior logic that is both obscure and atmospheric, her sculpture and print works are outlined in an undulating aura. Her practice seems to be guided by a sensitivity to certain recurring geometric shapes and patterns, but their significance feels blissfully unanalyzed, held in a state of suspended pleasure. The work then feels intuitive, guided by the playful awareness that in making art, one makes something come into being. This easy ontology is achieved through both Outlaw’s sophisticated technical abilities as an artist and her dedication to considering perception. Recently, she shared a Marianne Moore quote, “What is more precise than precision? Illusion…” The works here invite instability, asking you to move closer and farther away, to look carefully.

The aspiration of Outlaw’s practice, it seems to me, lies in the joy of paying attention. In the earned harmony that comes from seeing with a radical, full, attentiveness. It lies in the kind of looking that can imbue a tin pan, a watermelon, or the legs of a dog with infinite resonance.

Text by Theadora Walsh