LOS ANGELES

GILLIAN THEOBALD at Cirrus Gallery
Working with biomorphic shapes and forms, Gillian Theobald's paintings read like a roadmap to the internal workings of the human psyche. She creates luminous interior landscapes that function as fantastical worlds comprised of labyrinthine dots and drips that float in open space. The paintings are made up of two 12 x 24-foot canvases strategically placed side by side, with their meeting point becoming almost like a spine defining the "body" of the painting in its entirety. With titles like Drum Beat, Focus Groups, and Covered Tracks, the two words together further delineate the duality of the physical works as objects. Theobald's palette fluctuates from soft pinks to more saturated greens punctuated by erratic circular shapes. She uses color in much the same way she uses form —as another means of mirroring or translating the outer world into a deeper, more refined interiority as with the painting Web Cast, where the small interstellar shape repeats in an exact mirroring pattern across from itself, the yellow orb oddly luminescent. The best painting in the show is Fingered, which is the only work with a single word title and the only painting that utilizes a dark palette of blacks and grays. It stands almost as the conscience of the group, gray, bleak and defiant.