Lorin Gallery is pleased to once again host Christina Allan for a solo exhibition following her very successful group show curated by leaguato. The opening will take place on Saturday, June 25, from 6pm until 8pm in our Downtown Gallery. 

Christina Allan was born in 1995. She is fueled by the individual and collective anxieties surrounding the human condition and one's relation to the world.

Known for her highly expressive and vibrant paintings, Allan’s work explores profound aspects of the human experience. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from Parsons the New School for Design in 2017 and was awarded the institution’s Dean’s BFA Scholarship. Her paintings can be found in private collections throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. 

Bold and colorful, Allan’s paintings are executed using materials including acrylic and oil paint, spray paint, oil stick, modeling paste, and more. Her process begins with sketching characters and scenes that are eventually brought to life on canvas. She works in a continuous cycle of mark-making that forms vibrant, multi-layered, and multi-textured outcomes. The result is an energetic blend of vibrant and hazy spray-painted forms and carefully constructed compositions.

Allan views art as her purpose and an inherent part of her identity that reveals her most authentic self. She believes her subconscious guides her making and believes her work is a necessary outlet for confronting deep-rooted ideas about her existence. 

From dramatic mythical scenes to introspective psychological portraits, Allan’s work populates a world of fantastical creatures varying from angels, deities, and spirits, to the Grim Reaper – a recurring character in her work, often portrayed through a humanistic lens. A blend of abstraction and figuration, her painted narratives take place in a realm that is dreamy yet real, mirroring how existence can at times feel like a rigged game or fleeting dream. Ambiguous creatures drift in a dreamlike dimension without a clear direction or destination, provoking questions surrounding their identity, existence, and meaning.

HOT WHEELS brings together vibrantly painted scenes of otherworldly skeletal creatures and grim reapers mixed with iconography of material culture. They sport flashy cars and are adorned with jewelry relics of a former self, reminiscent of ancient mortuary practices where adornment of the body was believed to ensure the safe transition to the afterlife. They were objects of display, power, and protection – here they represent the same.

Set against natural and celestial backdrops, creatures weightlessly cruise on an adventure through an ambiguous realm – alone and together – to and through the unknown. They are anonymous spiritual vessels whose former existence is extinct, who now exist as glowing and god-like beings, emitting divine colorful energy that bursts through the canvas.

The exhibition will run through from June 25 to July 9 in our Downtown Gallery space.