LaChance Exibition at Houska Gallery October 18th - November 29th 2024

ALICIA LACHANCE

“I grew up as the child of antique hunters. Specifically, we looked for Americana that we would restore as a family. It was later collected, primarily, by people from the war-torn countries of WWII. These objects were conductive, almost totem-like, and held an ideal of hope and possibility that collectors had gleaned by watching American movies and listening to the music of that era.

I learned to value objects through color, weight, material, entropy and, most importantly, history. The ideas I try to capture relate to visual language, symbol forms, color codes, and the emotional response to materiality. The paintings strive to hold a similar spirit of possibility. I hope they operate like an equation that, on some level, acknowledges the present and ameliorates our modernity”.

LaChance makes process-driven paintings built up through layers of acrylic, casein, latex, and spray paint on a fresco-secco ground over canvas. Markmaking involves traditional brushwork, sign maker’s techniques, silk screen, taping, powdered pigment stains, scraping, and sanding. LaChance’s work conveys a layering and compression of multicultural traditions and art historical references, from ancient folk traditions to street art. Her highly worked paintings use open-source graphics as compositional maps and armature to hang intellectual ideas from as they relate to pushing boundaries in abstraction and process, as well as, pulling in contemporary social cues.

For her most recent exhibition, Walking City at Houska Gallery, LaChance explores bold graphic works that create these inventions of landscapes and meditations. Never wavering from her use of material, color, and process to engage the viewer with emotionality from this alchemy.

“I am a self-taught painter and mother of three. My work has been acknowledged by collectors, galleries, and museum curators with inclusion in exhibitions at the Elmhurst Art Museum and The Saint Louis Museum of Art. Selected by museum curators to represent what is happening in the midwest --The publication, New American Paintings, included my work on three occaisions”.

Recent commissions include but not limited to:

Google Headquarters NYC; Marina Bay Sands, Singapore and The Londoner Macau. These projects were lead by David Beckham’s design team. Commissioned by the Glazer family (owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United) to create a complete body of work for their hotel, The Vinoy. Work has also been placed at The Vandenberg Spaceforce Base, base for Nasa and SpaceX; The Mayo Clinic, among many other collectors worldwide.