LAEL MARSHALL | Fringe Paintings, 2022
January 8 - February 17, 2023
"I’ve always found a great(er) freedom working within limitations. Working within the constraints of a specific material, format, or palette - this paring down of the natural world becomes my muse - my gateway to invention.
I look closely at a small set of particulars and I find bounties. I am full-filled in the details, and nuances: the tiny event taking place as I perceive it. With this in the back of my mind, I establish rules and limitations for these works I call ‘fringe paintings.’ They must be constructed from dyed fabric, torn, not cut, into various rectilinear shapes, and arranged on the grid to fill out a 17 x 13” stretched canvas.
It is simple. They are simple. That’s what I like about them. That is not to say it is simple to make a good one: that’s precisely what intrigues me about them.
They are trial and error pieces, pre-conceived only in the most general way by their rules., After that, it’s all free form.
Intuition may induce the first motions, but then formal painterly assessment, scrutiny and criteria force adjustments - until the work settles into its place of being somehow ‘right.’
…and then there is the fringe itself… Teasing out lines between their edges, spilling over strings, crossing over other edges…
The fringe is the soft cozy part of the otherwise quasi-severe monochromatic color scale. It’s the tunnel the insects burrow into the earth. It’s the oxygen channel supported by all of the other stuff around it. It’s the wild card, and central to the life of these works.
I’ve shared my time making these works, and observing the subtleties of time making its changes over all things in our
backyard garden. I’ve always thought that art that held the greatest interest to me had to relate somehow to nature, and wondered if, and if so, how these they did?
Through their stillness? Something mathematical? The fact that their proportions are prime numbers? Maybe they reference cicadas? The fibonacci spiral? Sunflowers, sparrows?
Or maybe there is some commonality between nature and art that we harbor within ourselves, that is triggered when we look at them?" - LM
Lael Marshall was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1968.
Solo and two-person exhibtions include: Paper/Wood Constructions, Gray Contemporary, Houston, TX (2018), 57W57Arts, New York City (2016), Dieu Donné, New York City (2015), This Quiet Commotion, mitart Gallery, Basel, Switzerland (2011)
Group exhibitions include: Subvert City, Minus Space, Brooklyn (2018), Forming Identities, Sculpture Space, L.I.C., (2018), Discourse Abstract, Anita Rogers Gallery New York (2018), Triennale Grenchen, Grenchen, Switzerland (2018), Handmade Abstract, BRIC, Brooklyn (2015), OFF LINE ON MARK, Parallel Art Space, Brooklyn (2014), Ellipse, A3 Gallery, Moscow (2014), 100 Painters of Tomorrow, Beers Contemporary, London (2014) 30/30 Sydney Non-Objective, Sydney (2014), 30/30 Image Archive Project A/B/Contemporary, Zurich, (2014), Little Somethings, ParisCONCRET, Paris (2013), ERETAI, The Riverside Art Museum, CA (2012), Textility, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts (2012)
Marshall lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens.
LAEL MARSHALL | WAITING ROOM
November 4 – December 17, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, November 4, 6-9pm
Featured in the gallery’s Waiting Room, Lael Marshall will present works from her ongoing series involving fabric and handmade abaca paper. Whether it is a piece of woven cloth’s color, pattern, or texture, the starting point of Marshall’s process begins with the alluring materiality of her chosen medium. Fabrics have been an integral part of the artist’s practice for several years, not only providing a base for painting but also serving as an essential component in her study of 3-dimensional forms. Along with a series of fabric works, Marshall will show a selection of sculptural wall pieces made from abaca paper stretched over wooden armatures. Applied to the constructed shapes while still wet, the abaca fiber can be pulled and manipulated in such a way that as it dries, it shrinks into taut, tent-like forms.
Born in Seattle, WA, Lael Marshall studied at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and received her MFA from The Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. Recent two-person and solo exhibitions include Dieu Donné Workspace Program with Emily Noelle Lambert; and This Quiet Commotion with Michael Voss at mitart gallery (Basel, Switzerland). Her work has also been shown in group exhibitions at The Riverside Art Museum (Riverside, CA); ParisCONCRET (Paris); SNO (Sydney); Parallel Art Space (Brooklyn); Visual Arts Center of New Jersey (Summit, NJ); Beers Contemporary (London, UK); and Schema Projects (Brooklyn). Marshall held a 2014 residency at Dieu Donné Workspace, and is the recipient of The Acker Award for Visual Arts, San Francisco (2014). Marshall lives and works in New York.