Paintings
Nano, Phenomena, Utopia Machine, Fragments (3), Matrix
Los Angeles, CA
"Woods' paintings locate themselves both in front of and also beyond the realm of the metaclysmic, simultaneously containing, synthesizing and exploding it. As such, they make the dream of an invisible world delightfully real. (read more)
–Mark Van Proyen
"Exploring “a hybrid form of painting that is haunted by the future”, Alison´s work confronts us with dynamic surfaces and mixed media patterns that mirror the experience of a hectic and chaotic urbanism. While at the same time growing out of an interest in the interaction between the machine and the body, these paintings resist clear cut definitions between art, technology, and science, exposing liminal states in which a different regime of subjectivity becomes possible (and thinkable)."
–Andrej Mira
Shapes of Utopia
Alison Woods presents us with abstractions that have an uncanny rhythm with the tensions in early 21st century life. Everything around us has layers - nothing can be experienced long without a political treatise involved. No one can make an advancement in life without every casual comment they have ever uttered being overanalyzed.
The layered abstraction of this artist reflects, perhaps even endorses, a post shared-reality; hers is an art that reflects reality having more than one surface at different times and to different groups of people.
Phenomena
70 x 66 inches
acrylic on canvas
2018
Glimmer
72 x 96 inches
acrylic on canvas
2019
At every passage there is contradiction - between colors, shapes, negative and positive space insisting they belong in the residence of the other, paint applications of thin washes are matched with occasional impastos. That there are soft passages mutilated by hard passages may be less a formal construct than a conceptual one.
Not having a resolved picture is something that an art school is supposedly put on earth to cure. But Woods doesn’t seek pictorial resolution in any traditional sense. The cacophony of impulses is the foundation and the acceptance of this visual clutter as totality is the goal.
In the world around us, we see truth buried sometimes, transparent a moment later and then gone completely. The passages in all of Woods’s work are brief yet engaging expositions taunting us about what we see and think we see. They plead for us to question what we know versus what we think we know.
—Mat Gleason
Palimpsest
52 x 50 inches
acrylic on canvas
2018
Science Junk
50 x 40 inches
acrylic on canvas
2020
City of Gold Studies
12 x 12 inches
acrylic on wood
2019
Ghosts
48 x 46 inches
mixed media on wood
2014
"Woods is a painter's painter. Her work consists primarily of paintings and installations that involve paintings. Her work explores the relationship between scale and the human body, between size and perception, and between sensorial conditions and the psychology of our complex cultural associations of what painting could be." read more...
–Ginger Wolfe Suarez
Matrix
96 x 132 inches
acrylic on PVC
2012
Fragments
24 x 24 inches
acrylic on PVC
2018
Ask Mr Science
50 x 40 inches
acrylic on canvas
2020
Fragments
24 x 24 inches
acrylic on PVC
2012
Utopia Machine
48 x 46 inches
acrylic on canvas
2013
Ghosts, Detroit, Nano II
Los Angeles
Detroit
78 x 114 inches
acrylic on canvas
2013
The Night
30 x 30 inches
acrylic on wood panel with black lights
2018-2019
Bear Trap
Illusion of Wealth (series)
30 x 40 inches
mixed media on paper
2008
Commodities Extreme
Illusion of Wealth (series)
30 x 40 inches
mixed media on paper
2008
Nano II
48 x 46 inches
acrylic on canvas
2012
Utopia
52 x 52 inches
acrylic and graphite on canvas
2012