Hayal Pozanti: Tender Mountain

25 Apr-2 Jun 2024

PV 25 Apr 2024, 6-8pm

Overview

Timothy Taylor is pleased to present Tender Mountain, an exhibition of new paintings by Hayal Pozanti. Marking the artist's first solo exhibition in the UK and her second with the gallery, this presentation will feature seven large and medium-scale paintings, as well as three studies, depicting expressive landscapes and exuberant biomorphic forms. These lush, surreal canvases document the artist's dedicated exploration of her experiences in nature. 

Pozanti's primary subject is the natural world and our relationship to it. In her daily life, she opens herself up to communing with and closely observing the environment: the texture of lichen, a stream of water, a glimmer of moths, or the old-growth maple trees that grow beside her Vermont home. With a remarkable sensitivity to space, she beholds nature deeply, entering meditative states of unwavering attention. She sketches en plein air before returning to the studio to translate her impressions to the canvas using sustainable oil sticks. Blending her medium with her fingers, she takes a tactile, almost sculptural approach to pigment application, ensuring an uninterrupted connection between her mind and the canvas. 

Though her sketches involve careful observation, Pozanti doesn't seek to replicate the natural world. Rather, she aims to capture the world as she encounters it-as a sensate, dreaming, interpretive subject. As a result, her landscapes breathe with life. The painting A Dream Strayed Into Light (all works 2024), for example, features a gauzy path lined with ecstatic, jewel-toned flora, all seemingly uplifted by a gust of wind. In The Shimmering Shoulders of the World, an ambient beachscape at twilight is viewed through a fringe of undulating branches. Lips to Breathe Her Name centres on a limber flower whose petals recall feminine anatomy. 

“My paintings are love letters to the Earth,” the artist explains. “I make them to celebrate, remember, and immortalise the beauty of the natural world… As I exist within the world, everything in it exists within me. This feeling of oneness and the urgency to embrace it blossoms in my work.” Beneath the enchantment that characterises these paintings, however, there is an element of melancholy. By emphasising our indivisibility from nature and revelling in its beauty, Pozanti hopes to inspire care for our environment and for all that is nonhuman in our world.