Lehmann Maupin presents A Certain Oblivion, an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Calida Rawles. This is her first major solo exhibition in New York, following an In Focus exhibition with the gallery in 2021. Featuring Rawles’ most monumentally scaled works to date, A Certain Oblivion celebrates hope as an expression of our shared humanity in the face of dark times. The power of Rawles’ proposition is embodied in her subjects: young women and girls who float and tread—alone and in community—in uncertain waters. They are the next generation, women whose graceful determination to transcend the riptides of contemporary American life belies the effort required to keep their heads above water. Rawles’ newest body of work reminds us that their triumph is our salvation. 

Water is an element of paradox: placid and turbulent, navigable and unwieldy, transparent and unknowable, clarifying and obscuring. Throughout Rawles’ practice, water’s permeability offers a structure for contending with the past while looking toward the future. She has drawn inspiration from water memory theory, the idea that water absorbs physical and spiritual traces of that which passes through it. In her work, water retains its varied and charged associations across time and place. These are signaled in a variety of subtle shapes in the ripples and reflections that dapple each painting’s surface. Almost imperceptible, these forms allude to recent events in our nation’s assault on the rights of women. Troubling the exquisite beauty of crystalline swells, Rawles’ textured references remind us of the undertow that threatens to drag us down if we do not push back. Rising above it all, Rawles’ tenderly painted figures become everywomen—daughters of an upward movement powered by hope and enacted with grace.