FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Regen Projects
633 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424
Fax. (310) 276-7430
www.regenprojects.com
LIZ LARNER
April 24 – May 22, 2010
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 24, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Liz Larner. The exhibition will present new sculptures of arcing forms garnered from the ubiquitous figures of smiles, hearts, and flowers. These ideograms overlay each other formally and metaphorically as they evoke a multitude of emotions. They can be kitschy symbols of happiness, but are also tokens and gestures given during moments of grief and loss. Larner opens and abstracts these familiar forms. She tests and animates these symbols by taking them somewhere else in an embrasure and extension that is concrete, poetic, and sublime.
Liz Larner's work navigates the vast and still unexplored possibilities of sculpture's formal language, which she uses to structure a discourse that is distinctly her own. Her work has always played with color and materials. For Larner, color is an independent three-dimensional element that can modify and reinvent form. In this exhibition, the sculptures initially appear black and devoid of color. However, closer inspection unveils multi-layered hyper-chromatic works. At different distances and angles, each work reveals saturated surfaces that shift, refract, and transform.
Materials speak and evoke preconceived ideas. Larner acknowledges this, and pursues alternatives through the oscillation of our sense of something and the illusion inherent in material ambiguity. Cast bronze is rough and soft, heavy and airy; ceramic has a lightness that defies gravity as well as density and weight; aluminum is strong but delicate and creates volume without mass. Larner mixes unexpected combinations of color, materials, and form to intensify and shift perception.
Larner's work is made to be approached and reflected upon. It requires a negotiation of space. Perception goes beyond the visual. It is as important to revere our embodied condition and the complex experience of the physical as it is to embrace the conceptual pleasure of comprehending the spirit of emotion through our sensate perception.
"Larner's work carries the equally essential potential for glancing in its shifting between inner and outer realities… Larner's glance is an instrument of perception, a machinery of becoming, constantly and simultaneously separating and dividing virtual and actual realities, perception and memory…Larner's installations are composed of a multiplicity of glances that constitute the main pulse of the conceived environment, and as such they structure the sequences of newly born, passing images and impressions. Such dynamic composition is like glancing: sometimes shy, fugitive, short-lived and instantaneous, sometimes focused, concentrated, penetrating…"
(Adam Budak. "The Dynamics of Something. On Mirroring, Varying and Sensing in the Work of Maria Lassnig and Liz Larner" in Two or Three or Something: Maria Lassnig, Liz Larner, published by Kunsthaus Graz, Austria, 2006, p. 22)
Born in 1960 in Sacramento and a graduate of Cal Arts, Liz Larner lives and works in Los Angeles. This will be the artist's fifth solo exhibition at the gallery. Larner's work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States. Survey exhibitions of her work have been held at the Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2006); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001); the MAK, Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (1998); and the Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (1997).
An opening reception for Liz Larner will take place on Saturday, April 24, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. For further information please contact Jennifer Loh, Heather Harmon, or Stacy Bengtson at the gallery.
Regen Projects
633 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424
Fax. (310) 276-7430
www.regenprojects.com
LIZ LARNER
April 24 – May 22, 2010
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 24, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Liz Larner. The exhibition will present new sculptures of arcing forms garnered from the ubiquitous figures of smiles, hearts, and flowers. These ideograms overlay each other formally and metaphorically as they evoke a multitude of emotions. They can be kitschy symbols of happiness, but are also tokens and gestures given during moments of grief and loss. Larner opens and abstracts these familiar forms. She tests and animates these symbols by taking them somewhere else in an embrasure and extension that is concrete, poetic, and sublime.
Liz Larner's work navigates the vast and still unexplored possibilities of sculpture's formal language, which she uses to structure a discourse that is distinctly her own. Her work has always played with color and materials. For Larner, color is an independent three-dimensional element that can modify and reinvent form. In this exhibition, the sculptures initially appear black and devoid of color. However, closer inspection unveils multi-layered hyper-chromatic works. At different distances and angles, each work reveals saturated surfaces that shift, refract, and transform.
Materials speak and evoke preconceived ideas. Larner acknowledges this, and pursues alternatives through the oscillation of our sense of something and the illusion inherent in material ambiguity. Cast bronze is rough and soft, heavy and airy; ceramic has a lightness that defies gravity as well as density and weight; aluminum is strong but delicate and creates volume without mass. Larner mixes unexpected combinations of color, materials, and form to intensify and shift perception.
Larner's work is made to be approached and reflected upon. It requires a negotiation of space. Perception goes beyond the visual. It is as important to revere our embodied condition and the complex experience of the physical as it is to embrace the conceptual pleasure of comprehending the spirit of emotion through our sensate perception.
"Larner's work carries the equally essential potential for glancing in its shifting between inner and outer realities… Larner's glance is an instrument of perception, a machinery of becoming, constantly and simultaneously separating and dividing virtual and actual realities, perception and memory…Larner's installations are composed of a multiplicity of glances that constitute the main pulse of the conceived environment, and as such they structure the sequences of newly born, passing images and impressions. Such dynamic composition is like glancing: sometimes shy, fugitive, short-lived and instantaneous, sometimes focused, concentrated, penetrating…"
(Adam Budak. "The Dynamics of Something. On Mirroring, Varying and Sensing in the Work of Maria Lassnig and Liz Larner" in Two or Three or Something: Maria Lassnig, Liz Larner, published by Kunsthaus Graz, Austria, 2006, p. 22)
Born in 1960 in Sacramento and a graduate of Cal Arts, Liz Larner lives and works in Los Angeles. This will be the artist's fifth solo exhibition at the gallery. Larner's work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States. Survey exhibitions of her work have been held at the Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2006); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001); the MAK, Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (1998); and the Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (1997).
An opening reception for Liz Larner will take place on Saturday, April 24, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. For further information please contact Jennifer Loh, Heather Harmon, or Stacy Bengtson at the gallery.