Tala Worrell: Phosphenes

Parrasch Heijnen is pleased to present Phosphenes, the gallery’s first exhibition with Providence, RI-based artist Tala Worrell (b. 1991, New York, NY).

In a sensual experience of paint, Worrell, who is Lebanese American and was raised in Abu Dhabi, melds the graphic in a linguistic interplay with expression. The language surrounding the artist’s figuration relays a constellation of meaning derived from a central point. Confined within the boundaries of the canvas, Worrell’s paintings relay the interconnectivity of shape and gesture as a visual expression of emotion.

Worrell’s work harmonizes disparate parts as a cohesive whole in multisensory compositions. While she paints, Worrell revolves around the canvas using the inertia of her motion in centrifugal force. The paintings evolve in an outward expansion with varying degrees of control. Each surface ripples and coagulates, as the plane continues to move and solidify. In an active process, the image makes itself in the moment, where the extended dry times are as much a part of their creation as the artist’s intervention. In the large-scale work, Balanced Load (2023), pools of billowing forms – henna reds, grays, blacks, and violets – cascade along the right and left perimeters of the image, surrounding a vertical field of lighter-toned shapes from which drips descend in synchronized gestures.

In a process of reorientation, Worrell identifies behavioral rhythms as our bodies synchronize with the changing light of the seasons. The interconnected and cyclical nature of environmental occasions rely on a sensitivity toward the present. Each of Worrell’s compositions arises from the impression of light filtered through internal memory, in a balance of translucent and opaque media. Absorbing peripheral activity, the artist looks toward the quotidian for technical inspiration and to her environment recalling spatial experiences, charged with the temporality of light. 

To further inform sensory perception through texture, Worrell uses an array of organic elements imbued with personal meaning. She scatters Arabic coffee, chia, black seeds, tea leaves, sesame seeds, za’atar, henna, rice flour, sumac, layering the material between and above thick, glossy oil and alkyd. The earth tones of these cured and ground elements contrast with the vibrant chromatic enamels and paints. Adding further depth and dimensionality, the organic matter absorbs, rather than reflects, the surrounding light and paint. The paintings in this show endure as an imprint on the mind, evolving from a gossamer of material abstraction interlaced with personal memory in visual pleasure.