About
In painting, the picture plane carries the promise of spatial expansion: an implied horizon with limitless possibility. Yet, the physical surface of a painting antagonizes this illusion, as it ceaselessly asserts its truth as a flat surface. Within this plane, Mary Laube’s work questions how objects accumulate meaning across time and space as they are placed in various contexts. “Cultural” artifacts have been preserved, exhibited, stolen, decontextualized and censored as they are yielded to exercise or undermine power. Her work reconfigures these references amongst each other along with their respective national, political, and religious meanings. Fragments of folk paintings, textiles, ornaments, and other objects are echoed in the work as synthesized forms that appear flattened, off-kilter, and unnamable. Through the abstraction of historical objects Laube’s paintings give form to the de-territorialized conditions of a globalized and colonized world. In doing so, they become artifacts themselves, antagonizing our relationship to culture, and the fraught process of defining it.
Mary Laube (born Seoul, Korea, 1985) is Associate Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her MFA (2012) from The University of Iowa, and her BFA (2009) from Illinois State University. Laube has held recent solo exhibitions at Morgan Lehman Gallery (NYC), Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), Tristar Arts (Knoxville, TN), and the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art (IN). Group exhibitions include Laney Contemporary (Savannah), The Warbling Collective (London), Culture House D.C., Virginia Commonwealth University (Qatar), the Spring Break Art Show (NYC), Monaco (St. Louis), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (NYC), Field Projects (NYC), Atlanta Contemporary (with Good Weather Gallery), and the Knoxville Museum of Art among others. Artist residencies include Yaddo, Wassaic Project, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Stiwdeo Maelor (Wales). Past publications include Art Maze Mag, Maake Magazine, and New American Paintings and her work has been reviewed in White Hot Magazine and New Art Examiner among others.
Contact
laube.mary@gmail.com