Caitlin Lonegan: Gems and Roses

Caitlin Lonegan
Gems and Roses
April 24 - May 24, 2025

Broadway is pleased to announce Gems and Roses, a solo exhibition of new abstract paintings by Los Angeles artist Caitlin Lonegan. 

With degrees in both Applied Physics and Studio Art, and an abiding intellectual investment in historical modes of painting, Lonegan is uniquely situated to take a carefully calibrated route to pleasure.

Oil paint, in a remarkable array of color, viscosity, relative opacity and reflectivity is united with linen and canvas via accordingly various methods. Pigments, from shimmery metallics to matte pastel hues (the titular gems and roses) are dryly brushed or lushly dripped, weaving layers of individuated optical and sensory maneuvers into coherent compositions of mindful abandon. Utilizing the full color spectrum, Lonegan’s paintings are built from opposing modes of brushwork, from staccato, side-by-side stipples reminiscent of Suerrat, to dreamier full-armed washes. 

As front-loaded as her practice is with a carefully researched vocabulary of visual effects and gestures, Lonegan privileges memory and instinct in the studio. In process, the artist acts as a lightning rod, transmitting the accumulated energy of her experience and long-looking. As such, she can draw upon a beloved Old Master painting, the buildings and skies of her urban Los Angeles environment, or a remote Alpine forest with equal inspiration—and often in complex combination. In fact, the artist’s recent residency in the Austrian mountains fostered a new relationship to landscape and particular conditions of light that were added to the mix in this group of works. 

In a finished painting, each of these constituent components combine to evoke such an elevated atmosphere that it approaches weather. Brooding or serene, the emphasis is inevitably on instability and continuous, restless change. As a reward for a sustained encounter, the viewer is provided with an analog for time itself—a map of accumulated moves that are slowly individuated from the whole, unpacking the artist’s synthesis. This is manifested both in the minute and immediate spatio-temporal phenomenon of apparent “flickering”, to the slower burn of adjacent color and competing transparency. The artist's goal, broadly speaking, is to create a system by which durational viewing mirrors the making of the painting. 

The overall result is the dichotomous conflation of grit and pure beauty, action and contemplative repose, which, in Lonegan’s hands, are perceived less as extremes of fixed polarity than as a constantly shifting alliance.

Caitlin Lonegan (b.1982) received her BA from Yale University in Art and Applied Physics in 2005 and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010. Her work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions at venues such as OCHI in Sun Valley, Idaho (2023); Various Small Fires in Dallas, Texas (2023); Vito Schnabel Gallery in St Moritz, Switzerland (2022); Vito Schnabel Gallery in New York, NY (2021); Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder in Vienna, Austria (2022, 2021, 2018); Susanne Vielmetter in Los Angeles, CA (2018); and ACME in Los Angeles, CA (2012; 2010). Lonegan’s work has been featured in public group exhibitions including Abstract Painting Now! Gerhard Richter, Katharina Grosse, and Sean Scully... at Kunsthalle Krems in Krems, Austria (2017); Wake Up Early Fear Death: Caitlin Lonegan, Rebecca Morris, Laura Owens, a series of three solo exhibitions curated by Philipp Kaiser at Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder in Austria, Vienna (2014); and the major survey exhibition Made in L.A. 2014 at UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA (2014). Lonegan’s works can be found in many museums and permanent collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA; Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, WA; Pérez Art Collection in Miami, FL; The Beth Rudin DeWoody collection in Miami, FL; Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Germany; Berezdivin Collection in Puerto Rico, USA; Strauss Collection in Rancho Santa Fe, CA; Benton Museum at Pomona College in Pomona, CA; and the SoArt Collection in Vienna, Austria.