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Immolation
Phil Holt Art Exhibit at Invisible NYC
By Jesse Lee Denning
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Invisible NYC is proud to host, Immolation, a solo-show featuring new work by San Francisco based artist, Phil Holt.
Mr. Holt has been a well-respected, talented tattooist for ten years. He owned and operated the tattoo studio and gallery Redletter1 in Tampa Florida. Recently, he moved to San Francisco in order to tattoo with Grime at Skull & Sword. A prolific painter, his work has been featured in prestigious exhibits throughout the US as well as Osaka, Barcelona, and London.
Mr. Holt was a member of the New Skool Collective based in San Jose. Much of his painting sensibility reflects and is clearly influenced by the graphic, mural-like graffiti and highly rendered figurative aesthetics found in New Skool's signature style. For his exhibit at Invisible NYC, Mr Holt will present large-scale watercolors not previously shown as well as smaller oil paintings and mixed-media pieces. In these works, his talent for bold, dramatic, and somewhat eroticized paintings is at its best. Organic circulatory forms undulate, surround and bleed into aqueous backgrounds while brushing and encasing strong, nude female forms. These female figures are then juxtaposed with delicately rendered birds, and other cryptic, lyrical narrative visual elements. Mr. Holt’s large scale, visually confrontational works are cleverly and subtly peppered with small details of figures and symbolic imagery.
Mr. Holt states that the subject matter for these new works is very personal, the overall theme revolving around self-sacrifice while touching on anxiety, loss, depression, and disease. He states "everything is veiled and hidden…the whole show is [built on] metaphors and is personal...so people will have to make up their minds for themselves....I painted these for me alone." Who ever they were painted for, the works are engaging, visually stimulating journeys through the human psychosis. Violence, sex, temptation, hope, death, life are all themes deeply embedded into Mr. Holt's fluid signature style through his magical mastery of the medium and fantastical nature of the subject matter. It is a dramatic, moving, and exciting exhibit not to be missed.
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