Lonnie Holley
From the Roots I am
20" x 14.4", archival pigment print
Signed edition of 50
$200
Dubbed the "Insider's Outsider" by Mark Binelli in The New York Times, Lonnie Holley is an artist whose practice is far expansive beyond the confines of traditional definition. Staking his foundational roots in Birmingham, Alabama, Holley's first creations were sandstone carvings which soon transformed to more closely mirror his hometown surroundings by forming vast sculptures comprised of discarded steel and other readily available found objects. As he explained to Binelli, "'What I'm doing here, I think Malcolm said it best: by any means necessary,' Holley said. 'We can make art where we have to. Dr. King, if you remember, wrote a sermon on a piece of toilet paper.'" Holley's installations (and wall-mounted sculpture, musical compositions, and personality) are dense studies of matter and its inherent loaded spiritual presence. A continual investigation of and reverence for things in all their abundant meaning weaves a continual thread throughout Holley's body of work, as well as the consistent reminder of the dark symbolism behind the harsh reality of their accumulation.
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