Exhibition - Galia Linn: Resurgence

Curated by Emma Gray

Track 16 presents Los Angeles-based artist Galia Linn in her solo exhibition Resurgence curated by Emma Gray, founder of Five Car Garage.

This new body of work explores the themes of internal landscape and play through both sculpture and work on canvas. The canvas pieces are a continuation of the theme that Linn often expresses in her practice: sanctuary. In previous works, the artist created sanctuary spaces where people might come and reflect together, paving way for a resurgence. Now, the sanctuary turns inward, and the works reflect individual, inner landscapes, yet still sanctuaries, nonetheless. An internal landscape, for Linn, is not simply a fanciful location, but contains a map of the self, populated with past memories and projected hopes–a site for bubbling the unconscious: an internal sanctuary.

Linn’s interest in natural landscapes pushed the artist into years of experimentation with watercolor landscapes, focusing on trees because of their ability to grow in areas razed by human activity. Trees equal rebirth. She eventually began to abstract these landscapes by using the same techniques she uses for her sculptures: heavily textured and liquid layered glazing. Organic colors are layered while wet, allowing the paint to mix in its own way. When glazing clay in the kiln, the process becomes the catalyst–or alchemist–that bonds the layers of glazes and the clay together. In these new paintings cracked surfaces bleed color, with marks concentrated towards the bottom, allowing for a sense of luminosity towards the top. The works transform through this process to quiet meditations full of stains, smudges, and soft marks. Linn states that she does not control this process, but only offers guidelines.

Also featured in the show are beach ball sculptures, which stand in contrast to the contemplative nature of the works on canvas. Sculptures based on the concept of play, the work originates from beach balls. Linn inflates and wraps the balls with clay, creating roughly textured and layered, undulating, organic surfaces with natural hues. When the sculptures are finished, the artist simply deflates the ball to use again. This act of deflation and transformation reflects the cyclical nature of creation and renewal, yet, too, the beach balls are an escape, a way to make something joyful, playful, and reminiscent of summer. For Linn, these notions of both inner landscape and play work as part of the art-making process, along with being open to what one’s unconscious is saying.

Galia Linn is a sculptor, painter, and site-responsive installation artist living and working in Los Angeles. Linn’s childhood and early adulthood was spent in Israel surrounded by relics and ruins of civilizations, from ancient archeological artifacts to the contemporary remains of armed conflicts. This instilled in her an intimate connection to past and present civilizations, as well as the understanding that each place is filled with complicated stories and relationships.

Her work is currently on view at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, CA through April 14, showing a 20-year survey exhibition of her work titled “Vessels and Guardians” and at Emma Gray’s Five Car Garage through March 30 in her show titled “Strength and Vulnerability.” In 2025, she will exhibit a project for the Archeology Research Center at USC. Additionally, she has collaborated with UCLA’s Fowler Museum in workshop interventions. Her site-responsive installations, an ongoing series since 2014 titled “A Place,” evoke the basic human need for sanctuary and safety. Linn has shown nationally and internationally, including such venues as the Brand Library and Art Center (Glendale, CA), Descanso Gardens (La Canada-Flitridge, CA), and Galerie Lefebvre and Fils (Paris, France). She has been commissioned to create site-responsive installations at the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library (La Jolla, CA), 18th Street Art Center (Santa Monica, CA), and LAXART (Los Angeles, CA), among others. Her work is included in numerous private collections in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Paris, Brussels, and Tel Aviv. Linn’s projects have been featured in LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Art + Cake, and KCRW’s Art Talk.

Alongside her studio practice, she builds support structures for artists and creatives. Linn is the founder of Blue Roof Studios (BRS), a multidisciplinary art hub located in South Los Angeles. Informed by the core themes of her own studio practice, BRS offers a place for artists to work in an environment that fosters creativity and community. In 2020 Linn founded Arts at Blue Roof (AaBR), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Through studio residencies, mentorship, and public programs, AaBR seeks to build long-term relationships with artists and audiences to support accessible arts programs and meaningful arts experiences.