The next exhibition at Nancy Hoffman Gallery will be "Territories," new work by Linda Mieko Allen, opening on December 2, 2006 and continuing through January 4, 2007.

Each of Allen's exhibitions focuses around a theme or conceptual framework. "Territories," the work of the past two years, examines states of transition, transformation and boundaries. After moving to Western Massachusetts from California, the artist's work was bound to shift and change. Leaving behind her "Fractional" series which addressed the concept of building a system of small elements that make a whole, Allen jumped into a new life, a new studio, a new geographic environment, a new weather system. With this dramatic shift in her life, comes a dramatic shift in her work.

For the first time, Allen resides in a more rugged landscape; she also has easy access to marble quarries. The presence of this new material - marble dust - provoked a new approach to the painting surface, always a key part of any Allen painting.

Allen builds her paintings on wood panels with many layers of glazes and varnish, marble dust, graphite, polymer and encaustic, creating an organic lacquer-like surface, seductive and mysterious in appearance. While primarily abstract in nature, Allen often incorporates imagery, which she alters and inlays into the painting's surface. She covers her dream-like images with wax encaustic, revealing and concealing transparent passages in the painting's opaque shining surface. The juxtaposition of transparent and opaque give the viewer a sense of what lies beneath the surface skin, a sense of discovery. In her new work Allen imbeds images of houses, abstract masses of land, shifting planes, whirls of smoke, tiny morphing figures, referencing themes of some of her earlier work.

Allen writes of her new work: "'Territories' investigates state of boundary, transition and transformation and also addresses the relationship of the psychological and physical properties of those boundaries, places and balance. I envision this body of work as a psychological window into issues of place and displacement. This work exudes a feeling of transition with the presence of unusual land-forms, smoke, water systems, accumulations, piles of houses, etc., speaking to an overall fascination and concern for the "systems" in our immediate and not so immediate environ-ment. These systems float, shift and push the space and boundaries in the paintings and works on paper. There is force, tension and flow in the works, which contradict and speak to a symbiotic sort of relation evident on so many levels in life….a co-dependency, if you will. I am also interested in the dynamics of isolation of objects in a situational grouping, a kind of aloneness or separation in the larger scheme of things. These works are systems of space, time and possibility.

"I have been intrigued with the marble quarries since I moved to North Adams, Massachusetts; I longed to use marble dust in my work, an ideal vehicle for my experimen-tation and execution. I enjoy that it is mined in the area. Using local marble dust, graphite bound with polymer, encaustic and photo/drawings in an inlaid technique, the work emerges with a rich physicality of surface and organic/geometric qualities, and a presence that comes from layering in a delicate and force balance, simplicity and complexity coexisting."

Linda Mieko Allen, Territories I, 2006, mixed media, 7 x 7 inches	Linda Mieko Allen, Territories II, 2006, mixed media, 7 x 7 inches	Linda Mieko Allen, Territories III, 2006, mixed media, 7 x 7 inches	Linda Mieko Allen, Territories IV, 2006, mixed media, 7 x 7 inches
Linda Mieko Allen, Territories V, 2006, mixed media, 7 x 7 inches	Linda Mieko Allen, Territories VI, 2006, mixed media, 7 x 7 inches	Linda Mieko Allen, Territories VII, 2006, mixed media, 7 x 7 inches

Linda Mieko Allen was born in Osaka, Japan. She received her B.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and attended Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. She has received painting residencies from the American Academy in Rome, Bogliasco Foundation, Italy; Demis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska; Djerassi Resident Artists Grant, Woodside, California; MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire; Roswell Foundation, New Mexico; The Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, Wyoming; and Weir Farm Trust, Wilton, Connecticut. She also received a Pollock-Krasner Award, New York and a grant from Berkshire Taconic Foundation, Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

The artist's work has been shown at Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University; Evanston, Illinois; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; New Jersey Center for the Arts, Summit; Roswell Art Museum, New Mexico; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artists Gallery, California; University Art Gallery, California State Hayward, California.