Moving Mountains

Laura Berger, Rosson Crow, Annie Hémond Hotte, Max Jansons, and Sarah Thibault

July 22 - August 19, 2023

The Pit Palm Springs

The Pit is pleased to present “Moving Mountains” a group exhibition at The Pit’s Palm Springs location featuring Laura Berger, Rosson Crow, Annie Hémond Hotte, Max Jansons, and Sarah Thibault. Honoring the Palm Springs mountains surrounding the gallery, the five painters in “Moving Mountains” engage with the mysticism of landscape via the interplay of representation and abstraction. The exhibition will be on view July 22 - August 19, 2023 at The Pit Palm Springs. The exhibition opening will be all day Saturday July 22 from 11am - 5pm.

In Chicago-based artist Laura Berger’s dreamlike, emotionally resonant oil-on-canvas works, identical nude female figures are doubled and overlapping, suggesting a fractured and splintered self. In the dusty pink Pulling You Back into Me, 2023, two transparent, intertwined bodies form a mountain-scape as they reach for each other, symbolizing a woman trying to reconnect with a past version of herself. New York-based painter Annie Hémond Hotte presents the female body as a maze-like landscape decorated with Peruvian Nazca lines, ancient desert geoglyphs that can be viewed from hundreds of miles above land. Patterns and repetition are paramount in Labyrinth Woman and Lion (Strength) and Labyrinth Woman (Nocturne) (both 2023)— which feature animals, vegetation, and commanding female figures, all interconnected by detailed, recurring symbols and strokes.

The three Los Angeles based artists in the exhibition, have all spent time in the desert surrounding Palm Springs and bring those experiences directly into their paintings. In making the works in this show, Max Jansons was inspired by both the light and the mystical experience of the barren, mountainous region. In Desert Bloom, 2022-2023, we see a close-up, abstracted, geometric burst of red, salmon, and yellow tones, in the artist’s words an “all-encompassing, visceral experience… like sticking your face into a flower.”

Rosson Crow’s maximalist, large-scale painting Energy Vortex, 2020, evokes the whirlwind of forces one comes across in the desert landscape: relics including broken fountains, sculptural busts, electrical poles, flags, a piñata, and a moonshine jug, as well as natural elements such as cactuses, grass, flowers, and a watermelon slice, all swirling around a tornado-like environment. An acid-toned color filter unites the amalgamation of discrete objects, creating a sense of harmony within the painting’s wildness. Sarah Thibault taps into the energy and aura of the mountain landscapes in her mauve, purple, and orange-hued works. In Underneath What We See, 2023, gold mountains represent clean, clear energy, while a magenta ridge denotes intuition and clairvoyance. The Energy That Radiates from Within, 2023, a more complex and variegated painting, features detailed textures, rainbow striations, rock formations, and flora, all swirling together to evoke the elemental energies and underlying frenzy of the natural world.

For more information email us at info@the-pit.la