New Acquisition: Hayal Pozanti's "A Liquid Echo" (2023)

By Emma Chubb, Charlotte Feng Ford ’83 Curator of Contemporary Art, SCMA.

“I’m still daydreaming, in a sense, and when I’m in my studio, I’m creating a new world for myself but I’m also proposing that we all partake in this new world together.” – Hayal Pozanti

In December 2023, after several months of planning and anticipation, Hayal Pozanti’s painting, A Liquid Echo, arrived in Northampton to its new and permanent home at SCMA. Made earlier in the year, it is part of a new body of work first shown at Pozanti’s solo exhibition, The World for a Mirror (Timothy Taylor, New York, NY, April 20-May 27, 2023). SCMA has a long history–back to the college’s first purchase of a painting in 1879–of acquiring artworks soon after they leave the artist’s studio. We are thrilled to continue this legacy of collecting art by the major artists of our time and to have Pozanti’s work join SCMA’s collection, where it will inspire students and visitors long into the future.

Portrait of Hayal Pozanti, Vermont, 2023. Photo: Didem Civginoglu. Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor © Hayal Pozanti

To make A Liquid Echo, Pozanti used her fingers and hands to render her vegetal forms in muted yet saturated shades of blue, green, and purple. The result is a painting of an environment that is at once familiar in its tree- and flower-like shapes, yet abstract and elusive. Its velvety surface appears to vibrate and ooze. Pozanti’s turn in this series to biomorphic shapes and references to the natural world marks a departure from the more geometric and tightly structured paintings she began in graduate school and refined during the first decade of her career. The aesthetic shift followed two moves of the geographic variety: a relocation, first from New York City to Los Angeles, and then, during the pandemic, from Los Angeles to Manchester, where her home and studio are surrounded by the flora and fauna of rural Vermont.

For Pozanti, the decision to apply oil stick directly to the canvas with her hands provided an occasion to shake off what increasingly felt like the limitations imposed by working with brushes. Using her hands and pigments in this way allows for a process that she describes as a more visceral and immediate way of working, a way to better connect her mind with her hand and to explore dreams and the subconscious. The result is a process that is more sculpting-like than painting-like. She compares it to working with clay. Using oil stick also allows her to adopt more environmentally conscious ways of creating paintings by bypassing tubes of paint all together.

For the moment, the painting can be viewed by appointment only. We’d love to hear from you so please get in touch!

Hayal Pozanti, A Liquid Echo, 2023. Oil stick on linen, 48 x 36 inches. Gift of Katy and Kyle Miller. SC 2024.7.1.