Art Now: Hazel Lutz
Art Now: Hazel Lutz
Oct 8, 2021
Hazel Lutz’s new body of work, unveiled at the Glassline Contemporary in Culver City, feels like a seismic reading of the emotional landscape of now. The exhibition, titled Soft Alarms, is a collection of twelve mixed-media paintings that blur the line between abstraction and figuration, urgency and intimacy. Lutz, long celebrated for her intuitive color sense and psychological depth, has taken a bold turn toward fragmentation and layering.
Each canvas in Soft Alarms is a palimpsest of gesture, texture, and interruption. In Echo Chamber, a central figure dissolves into a field of coral and graphite, as if memory itself were being erased mid-thought. Lutz’s use of translucent acrylics and embedded textiles creates a sense of time folding in on itself.
Her work speaks to the disorientation of contemporary life—screens, signals, and the constant hum of digital presence. Yet there’s nothing cold about these paintings. They breathe. They ache. They reach.
Lutz, who studied psychology before turning to painting full-time, brings a therapeutic sensibility to her practice. Her brushwork is deliberate but never rigid, often interrupted by scratches, stains, or stitched seams. In Threshold Logic, a series of small works on linen, she explores the idea of emotional thresholds—moments when feeling tips into action.
Critics have called her “a painter of the invisible,” and this show makes that clear. She paints what can’t be said, what’s felt in the gut before it’s named. There’s a quiet activism in her work, a refusal to flatten complexity.
The exhibition’s title, Soft Alarms, refers to the subtle signals we ignore until they become deafening. Lutz’s paintings are those signals—gentle, persistent, and impossible to tune out. Her palette, dominated by bruised pinks, stormy blues, and flashes of neon, feels like a mood board for the collective unconscious.
Hazel Lutz is not interested in spectacle. She’s interested in resonance. In how a single mark can hold a thousand meanings. In how silence can be louder than noise.
Art Now spoke with Lutz during the show’s opening, where she described her process as “listening with paint.” That listening is evident in every inch of canvas. These are not just paintings—they’re emotional terrains.
With Soft Alarms, Hazel Lutz proves once again that the most powerful art doesn’t shout. It whispers, and waits for you to lean in.
Each canvas in Soft Alarms is a palimpsest of gesture, texture, and interruption. In Echo Chamber, a central figure dissolves into a field of coral and graphite, as if memory itself were being erased mid-thought. Lutz’s use of translucent acrylics and embedded textiles creates a sense of time folding in on itself.
Her work speaks to the disorientation of contemporary life—screens, signals, and the constant hum of digital presence. Yet there’s nothing cold about these paintings. They breathe. They ache. They reach.
Lutz, who studied psychology before turning to painting full-time, brings a therapeutic sensibility to her practice. Her brushwork is deliberate but never rigid, often interrupted by scratches, stains, or stitched seams. In Threshold Logic, a series of small works on linen, she explores the idea of emotional thresholds—moments when feeling tips into action.
Critics have called her “a painter of the invisible,” and this show makes that clear. She paints what can’t be said, what’s felt in the gut before it’s named. There’s a quiet activism in her work, a refusal to flatten complexity.
The exhibition’s title, Soft Alarms, refers to the subtle signals we ignore until they become deafening. Lutz’s paintings are those signals—gentle, persistent, and impossible to tune out. Her palette, dominated by bruised pinks, stormy blues, and flashes of neon, feels like a mood board for the collective unconscious.
Hazel Lutz is not interested in spectacle. She’s interested in resonance. In how a single mark can hold a thousand meanings. In how silence can be louder than noise.
Art Now spoke with Lutz during the show’s opening, where she described her process as “listening with paint.” That listening is evident in every inch of canvas. These are not just paintings—they’re emotional terrains.
With Soft Alarms, Hazel Lutz proves once again that the most powerful art doesn’t shout. It whispers, and waits for you to lean in.