May 3 – June 7, 2023

Opening Reception with the Artists
Wednesday, May 3, 5:30–7:30PM

SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of The Three Withouts, a two-person exhibition with new work by artists Alison Hall and Sarah Ann Weber. The gallery will host a public opening reception with the artists on Wednesday, May 3rd from 5:30 – 7:30 PM. This will be Hall’s second exhibition with SOCO Gallery and Weber’s first.  

The Three Withouts will present paintings by both artists which are inspired by the imagery, colors and patterns  that adorn the walls, ceiling and the floor of Giotto’s Arena (Scrovegni)  Chapel in northern Italy (c. 1305).  

Hall’s paintings are made on chalk grounds, laboriously prepared akin to the preparation of frescos seven centuries ago. From a distance, the artists’ works are one solid color—just blue or black. Approach them and the intricate and subtle fields of pattern become illuminated. The paintings are an expanse of accumulating marks, where   decisions are made one at a time, at a slow pace. 

Light plays an important role in the experience of these paintings, as does the viewer’s body and its relationship to the paintings. Writer John Yau states, “...her slow, mesmerizing, monochromatic works provoke a state of exalted seeing… Hall keeps finding ways to pull willing viewers closer, to encourage them to get lost in looking as well as reflect upon this experience”. (Hyperallergic, 2022)

In contrast, Weber’s new works are created with a mixture of colored pencil, oil pastel and watercolor to achieve lush, polychromatic landscapes.  Her playful switch back and forth between painting and drawing on the paper’s surface results in overgrown environments that are intricate and dizzying.  Labyrinthine in design, the viewer becomes disoriented in the verdant foliage, losing all sense of direction.  The overall effect is bewitching and otherworldly.  Although rooted in the natural world, Weber’s employment of automatic gestures in the forms of scribbled marks and paint pours permeate her works with kinetic abstraction.  Art historian Jenny Sorkin writes, “Weber creates celebratory, and color-laden worlds that offer an abundance of layered patterns and stacked flora in a shallow depth of field, creating the dream world sensation of a fantasy jungle—and in our rapidly climate-changed world, this is truly fantasy.”

The Three Withouts pays tribute to the city where the Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel is located, Padua, also known as the “city of three withouts” (the Cafe without doors, the meadow without grass, and the Saint without a name). Giotto’s beautiful frescoes inside the Chapel are hailed as a masterpiece, marking a revolution in mural painting and a new understanding of spatial representation. 

Hall’s paintings in the exhibition evoke the action of looking towards the heavens and bending towards the ground in the Chapel – a ritualistic recreation of the patterns found in the Chapel’s ceiling and floor paintings.  Weber’s new work draws inspiration from motifs and colors found in the narrative frescos along the Chapel’s walls and thus become the twisting, turning movement in between. Together, the artists create a contemporary narrative,  a new emotional and psychological  experience. 

Alison Hall (b. 1980, American)

Alison Hall (b. 1980, American) received her BFA in Studio Art at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia and Todi, Italy. The artist then received her MFA in Painting at American University in Washington, D.C. and Corciano, Italy. Hall's paintings are strategically arranged compositions that allude to her ancestral heritage, poetry, and patterns from masterworks by Giotto—which she visits annually in Italy. Hall’s work has been exhibited in New York, Germany, and the United Kingdom, among other places.  Hall's work is in prominent permanent collections including the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, the Hall Art Foundation, and the Collection of Pam and Bill Royall. The artist divides her time between Virginia and New York, and currently lives and works in Virginia.

Sarah Ann Weber (b. 1988, American)

Sarah Ann Weber (b. 1988, American) received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Weber has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at venues including Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; 12.26, Dallas, TX; Club Pro, Los Angeles, CA; and The Franklin, Chicago, IL. Selected group exhibitions include Cummer Museum, Jacksonville, FL; Stems Gallery, Paris, FR; Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco; MAUVE Gallery, Vienna, Austria; Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, Brooklyn; Hunter Shaw Fine Art, Los Angeles; Galerie Nord/Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin; Locust Projects, Miami; and Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago. Weber will be an Artist-in-Residence at Fountainhead Residency, Miami, FL this spring. She lives and works in Los Angeles.