SARAH CUNNINGHAM

For her first solo show with Lisson Gallery in Los Angeles, the British artist Sarah Cunningham presents a newbody of work entitled Flight Paths. Named after a diptych that seemingly defies gravity, the gallery presentationcaptures this young painter's soaring, spontaneous gestures in full flow. In the two panels of Flight Path (allworks 2024) and throughout this exhibition, Cunningham explores aerial and bodily movements, flippingdirections and orientations until reaching that moment when verticality and horizontality shift or tilt beyondrecognition – when up becomes down, or left suddenly turns right.

The direction of travel in these works fluctuates between sweeping side-to-side brushstrokes, suggesting thelateral arcing of airplane contrails, and top-to-bottom marks that either open up the canvases to the sky, in CloudsClosed for Target Practice for example, or delve down into the ocean, in the submarine composition, ChoralChorus. The artist's frenetic and free movement of paint speaks not only to her constant, performative process– employing both time and movement in pursuit of a new formlessness in painting – but also to her materialexperimentation – removing paint with rags, holding two brushes in each hand at the same time, or evenapproaching the picture plane from one side when working on the surface. Cunningham is also known to rotateand even reverse her paintings, often making her oversized pictures on the floor.

There are other boundaries and pathways within the exhibition, from the first few paintings representing morninglight or the dawn of the day, on to the second half of the show, which moves towards dusk and nighttime. Whilethis could represent the passage of time that many of these works go through – with many of them only slowlyprogressing from clean canvas to final picture over the course of months or even years – the diurnal passage fromday to night is fundamental to Cunningham's practice. Due to the long, late and strange hours that she tends towork, she shows remarkable sensitivity to the fluctuation of light effects, ranging from the golden tones ofpaintings such as Sunrise with Spirits or Sunrise with Birdsong, through to the crepuscular, autumnal hues of TheDeepest Hour. This latter diptych, in particular, takes the exhibition firmly from day to night and into outer space,the artist tracking shifts in the solar system.

A further perspective on Cunningham's intense painterly process and preferred method of 'taking flight' isthrough spiritual release, akin to the shamanistic 'soul flying' documented in ancient accounts of ascension orreligious fervour (often brought on by ritual prayer or hallucinogenic means). In works such as Ghosts in theThroat, Cunningham's own visions–perhaps assisted by her self-imposed sleep deprivation and protractedpainting sessions–allow her to transition towards a higher, dreamlike state, which she describes in a passageabout painting this work: 'As I continue to apply paint, there is an uprising of tiny, spinning ghost-like figuresbefore my eyes. They were floating above the painting they had travelled out of, the thing they had so long andrelentlessly hidden within. Deep down, I knew that these ghosts would be unrecognisable to most, they would beimpossible to untangle from the paintings' splatters and earthy, worn-down clusters. Yet I could see them,hanging onto the last ray of light, weaving together, set swaying against a cotton sky.' It is in this feverishmoment when she can access both inner and outer worlds, summoning the psyche and the landscapesimultaneously, combining aerial views with what is hidden below.