Sophie Larrimore: Please Proceed

October 29 - December 17, 2022

The Pit Los Angeles

The Pit is delighted to present Please Proceed, an exhibition of new paintings by the New York City-based artist Sophie Larrimore, her first with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view at The Pit Los Angeles from October 29 - December 17 with an opening reception on October 29 from 5-7pm.

Larrimore’s idiosyncratic paintings feature recurring motifs that include poodles, birds, trees, and female nudes stacked and flattened in pictorial space. Within these parameters, Larrimore constructs her paintings with the fastidiousness of a watchmaker, privileging her communion with their emergence over weaving an explicit narrative. Her addition of wood frames to each work, several of which are ornate and hand-carved, evince their stature as contained objects, accentuating their hermetic and devotional nature.

Medieval tapestries, Indian and Persian miniatures, Byzantine icons, late 19th century French painting, and 18th century American needlework are several references embedded within Larrimore’s painterly lexicon. They inform her use of non-hierarchical space, her taut patterning of motifs, her “awkwardness” that accompanies any pursuit of what is essential underneath superficial appearances. Which is not to say that there isn’t rich ornamentation to the surface of her paintings: her brushwork is laboriously layered, rigorous in its directionality, and highly attuned to how each object meets the edge of another. Added to this rigor is her use of color, calibrated and supple, modeling her forms as if describing them in the textures of pigmented stone. This is a world that feels old, or of an age yet to exist, one that is seen in illuminated manuscripts or in the dreams of sentient ancient goddess statuary.

Case in point: Great Bush, 2022, like all of Larrimore’s paintings, depicts an edenic scene devoid of bromide religiosity. Her painting (which has a will of its own at times) has an insistence that its bird, poodle, and human motifs punctuate the composition in twos and threes, save for the oft-repeating plum-colored vegetation, or the single white bird, or the pale violet folding screen. This insistence has a numinous quality, that what you are seeing has to be retold within the picture, and in another picture, again and again. It is a visual chant for willing an imaginal world into existence in concert with the hand of the painter. With every iteration, Larrimore expands the edges of her otherwise invisible realm anew.

For further information, please contact the gallery at info@the-pit.la.