Claire Falkenberg @ Champion

Bloom (installation view)

Thorns (lifted from Falkenberg's website)

Bloom (installation view)

Claire Falkenberg has created a suite of ghostly works that drift between labored surfaces and vaporous illusions, sometimes, in the very same moment. Highly mineralized oil paint is applied over the top of large, collaged C-prints of trashy, twiggy, ambiguous locations. The paint seems to grow out of the center into amorphous blobs, leaving only enough space around the edges of the works to give one a glimpse of the photographed terrain beneath. These blobs act as blind spots that obfuscate the scene in a way that is both frustrating and calming.

Three of the pieces in the show contain black and charcoal colored figures that function as mysterious oil spills, sinking into the backgrounds. One of the darker ones sits on top of a mound of dirty street snow, and seems to be swallowing the mound whole. Are these blobby figures cleaning up or messing up? The lighter ones of chalky white, peachy pink and minty brightness sit on top and float as if they are portraits of benevolent apparitions.

The transparency at the edges of the paint is what gives each of these works a sense of blooming out from the opaque centers. It feels like an event. Like a photograph, or perhaps a film still, burning from the inside out. The story is there, and bittersweetly lost.

Bloom is up through July 16 at Champion in Austin.