Oleander: the sweetly scented killer
works by Susan Graham
Claire Lieberman
Open to the public:
Wednesday, July 17 - Friday, September 13, 2024
Monday - Thursday, 11am - 5pm
Fridays 11am -2 pm
Opening reception:
Wednesday, July 17, 6-8pm
Oleander: the sweetly scented killer
Oleander, an exhibition of sculpture and prints, conveys uncertainty about the future of the natural world and concern about conflict in contemporary culture. Much like the oleander’s vibrance distracts from its danger, Susan Graham and Claire Lieberman use images of flowers and playthings to attract while the underlying message is darker and probing.
Susan Graham’s sculptures and installations use strategies of pattern and decoration to poetically depict the struggle between nature and man. Inspired by the recurring patterns of complex pastoral scenes found on Toile de Jouy, and the porcelain and metal construction of antique toleware, these works depict clusters of flora interspersed with industrial structures such as transmission towers, satellite dishes, or cell phone towers disguised as trees. The sculptures may be used as props for animated films and videos, where these processes are linked from one piece to another, across media.
Claire Lieberman makes lustrous, edgy objects that engage nature and explore the relationship between play and games, and conflict in contemporary culture. Her dense, highly polished black marble sculptures convey both danger and beauty. Ranging from fleshy fruits to toy-like shapes to exploding flowers, each piece embodies a contradiction - dark, weighty, ancient material harnessed to evoke lively, stimulating subject matter. Lieberman’s cast paper prints and linoleum relief prints depict strange, floating flowers, and childlike images and probe the dynamics of play.
Graham and Lieberman’s art has often been curated into shows together because their practices employ sumptuous and tactile materials to engender meaning. They first met when their sculpture was shown in Sweet Tooth at COPIA (Culinary Institute of America, CA) and again when their gun sculptures (sugar guns and glass space guns respectively) were shown at several venues including Mudac Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Both are included in a new book, Loaded: Guns in Contemporary Art (Schiffer Publishing). Their projects come together again in Oleander, with references to war games and fragile environments in which seemingly innocent human actions have a provocative underlay and serious consequences.
A catalog with a text by curator Lily Wei is available.
Susan Graham attended Ohio State University and the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been shown at galleries and museums including Photology Gallery in Milan, Neuberger Museum of Art, Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, Musee International des Arts Modestes, Sete, France, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Lux Art Institute in southern California, and MUDAC Museum in Lausanne. Her work was commissioned (Nancy Rosen Inc./Allan Kolkowitz/Bloomberg Philanthropies project) for a public piece in the elevator lobby of the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Sheikh Zayed Tower in Baltimore, Maryland.
Graham has been the recipient of several fellowships and grants from organizations such as the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Sustainable Arts Foundation, SIP at the Blackburn Printshop in the Elizabeth Foundation, Smack Mellon Artist Residency in Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Ruth Chenven Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
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Claire Lieberman is a sculptor and installation artist who combines such materials as marble, Jell-O and video to explore the relationship between games and conflict in contemporary culture. Her work explores a range of dichotomies, such as the sublime and the quirky, and desire and danger. She is known also for her prints and sculptures of toy guns in glass. Lieberman received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston at Tufts and an MFA from Pratt Institute.
Lieberman’s solo shows include Massey Klein Gallery, NYC; Hot Wood Arts, Brooklyn; THE LAB, NYC; Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta; Gebert Contemporary, Scottsdale; and Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College. In NYC, her group shows include Massey Klein, International Print Center and Parker’s Box. Her upcoming GUNPOPS project will be shown at 601 Project Space, NYC, in August. Lieberman's international shows include mudac museum; Lausanne, Forum Schlossplatz, Aarau; Switzerland, Seoul Art Center, Korea; and ACC Galerie Weimar, Germany.
Claire Lieberman's publications include: Loaded: Guns in Contemporary Art (book -Schiffer), Unidentified Dangerous Beautiful Objects (book - Massey Klein Gallery), Sculpture, Whitehot, The New York Times, and Camouflage (book - Imperial War Museum and Thames and Hudson). Recent awards include: American Academy in Rome Visiting Artist (2023), Yaddo (2023), MacDowell (2022), and Illinois Arts Council (2024). Lieberman has also received awards from The Arctic Circle; National Endowment for the Arts; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; and Künstlerhaus, Salzburg.
Images L to R:
Claire Lieberman Bunny Boo
black marble 12in x 9.8in x 4.25in 2024
photo credit: Ken Kashian
Susan Graham“Toile Floating Landscape 12”
glazed porcelain, mounted on wall 13 x 18 x 5 in
2022
Installation Photos: Michael Hnatov
