Annesta Le | Written in Line
The Honey Pump is pleased to present "Written in Line" an online exhibition of neon and drawings by Annesta Le. Le was born to immigrant parents who escaped their country in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. With a turbulent upbringing, Le found her voice as a self-taught artist. Her practice is one of spiritual grounding through abstract language written in line also known as "asemic writing". Her neon works are hand molded over flame through a delicate balance of intention and intuition.
Jungian psychoanalysis and the notion of individuation - the process of self-actualization of the conscious and unconscious part of oneself - has influenced Le's atmospheric neon works. "Light can affect and change a mood and feeling in a room."
At an Ayahuasca ceremony in the rainforests of Brazil in 2009, Le worked with shamans through a revelatory vision, discovering her calling as an artist, revealing that she would get a studio space. Though in Le’s teenage years she made “floppy disk” art sharing her digital works with a close knit community of online artists finding camaraderie and critique, it was not until 2010 that she turned seriously to making, starting with painting. At the time, Le’s only audience was the studio space’s landlord, who encouraged the artist through her early years as a maker.
Le expanded her practice to neon after taking a workshop, drawn to the physical and intuitive process of bending glass over a ribbon burner’s flame—which involves heat, blowing through a latex tube, and sculpting forms in relation to her body. The glass tubes start out straight, and find articulation through Le’s movements in the glass studio resulting in sensuous bodily forms. The glass tubes are filled with rare noble gasses, such as Argon and Krypton, characteristic for its sharp emission lines which when ionized appear white and luminous. Due to the highly physical process of working with glass and the material’s inherent fragility, Le prepares her body for a strenuous session, entering with a purpose before “standing in the fire.”
Installation view, Sugarlift Residency, 2020
Le’s work moves away from the pop sensibility often associated with neon art as seen in Martial Raysse’s and Jung Lee’s work, and towards psychology, symbolism, and light that hints at an inward reflection. Le’s work is in conversation with artists like Keith Sonnier and Tracey Emin. Like Sonnier, Le’s work is a psychological drama embedded in sensory experience. Like Emin, Le’s work is textual, though for Le this text is an ambiguous scribbled language known as “asemic writing.”
Somewhere, Nowhere, 2018, Glass, krypton, wire 15 x 25 x 8 inches
"Asemic writing" is a wordless open semantic form of speech. Le articulates her voice through writing in line, leaving the viewer to translate and explore the asemic text. David Ebony, contributing editor of Art in America, notes of Le's approach, "Though wholly abstract and often resembling an asemic script or written language, the resultant shapes allude most directly to the human body, its limbs, protuberances, and imperfections, plus the sensuality of the human form in general."
Clear Blue, 2020, Glass, argon, wire 7 x 39 x 3.5 inches
Jungian psychoanalysis and the notion of "individuation" has guided Le through her practice. "Individuation" is the process of self-actualization of the conscious and unconscious part of oneself. The individuation process is broken down into three phases; the shadow representing ignored personal traits; the anima / animus or the feminine component of a man's personality, and the masculine component of a female's personality; and the final stage of the self or the totality of the whole psyche.