The Enigma of Line
New Paintings by Gregory de La Haba
The reinvention of line in the hands of the artist is a mercurial thing. For the painter Gregory de le Haba it’s not only part of a broader field of expression tied to his preceding series in which the use of expressive line played out as a visionary presence, but also a divergent mannerism which soon took on its own role in new works where it was put into its own context. The element, called a Light Tension, is an illuminated line describing a metaphoric presence of one or more figures in which a dramatic connection between them is implied but which goes no further than the silhouettes they possess. Sometimes the line frays or is blown about by unseen winds; sometimes it accompanies a background that places it into everyday narratives, and sometimes it is merely laid out before colored background with a brushy appliqué implying a dramatic staging such as the texture of wood or the shadow of barbed wire. The presentation of the silhouetted ur-figures in his light tension works suggest forms or forces that are metaphorically or narratively suggestive.
The Light Tensions are ambiguously constructed from two ideas that couldn’t possibly inhabit the same space. Light is by its very definition something transient, something fleeting, which is produced by other forces or other objects as they move about in the physical realm and effect each other. It is by its very nature the absence of tension. So “light tension” is by its very naming a new element not only in artistic expression, but in the known universe.
The role of light in this context is to form new bodies, and thereby forming new narratives, into and upon which anyone may project their own idea of meaning. De La Haba has created a community of tensions—stories and parables emerging out of the very reflected energy of life itself. The tensing of the light into forms that are recognizable as presences, acting and interacting as self-directed personas with some sense of their own agency, some sense of the poetry of their own existence, this tension is held for as long as it’s necessary to convert meaning. This is the quality of encounter they inspire.
Gregory de la Haba’s new solo exhibition Palimpsestos: Everything Will Be Illuminated, Eventually is currently on exhibit at Geuer and Geuer Art in Dusseldorf, Germany from February 21 to March 21, 2025