“Hello, house”
“Hello, Levi (House)”
“House hold” is an exhibition of work by Kentucky artist Levi River House, shown (maybe not so) coincidentally in our house. In his paintings, Levi reflects on relationship to place, how it shapes us and how we shape it. Most especially, his work considers the places we are asked to, want to, should, or do call Home. Playing with the tension of “Home” as both a material object as well as an ever-shifting idea, his paintings create a dialogue with the places in his life that have become, for him, monumental sites of reflection. In his work, flatness true to a folk-art style and depth vary, allowing structures to fluctuate, to become embodied and hollowed out. His scenes creep beyond the traditional four walls, including other residential actors like telephone poles, electrical wires, lawns, and front porches. House writes of the electrical poles unconnected to each other as “Communal and necessary,” interlinking place to place and person to person so tightly that they begin to “fold in on themselves.” In the work, we never extend too far beyond the facade of the House, but its variances act like tricky book covers, bearing hints at what might lie within the Home. Levi conjures the phrases he scribes along the edges of the paintings just as he writes poetry - guided by intuition, led on by remembrances, and intentionally void of editing. As they flow through him they flow to us, small moments of being and learning at the forefront of his work.
