Liz Larner – magnetic instinct

Regen Projects is pleased to present “magnetic instinct”, artist Liz Larner’s ninth solo exhibition with the gallery and an official collaboration with “The Getty’s PST ART: Art and Science Collide”. The exhibition presents new ceramic works surrounding Larner’s “Rubber Divider”, 1989 — two sheets of pure gum rubber connected to steel rods attached to two flame-cut, solid steel blocks that hold the tension of the opposing pull of weight and elasticity of the rubber sheets. Their opposition and mutual dependence underscores Larner’s longstanding interest in the relationship between structural support and the attitude of the object.

Engaged with the many possibilities of sculpture and abstract form, Larner uses material to encourage discoveries led by an intrinsic link between impulse and perception. Polished to a mirror finish, the brass and aluminum of these sculptures allows them to be positioned on the wall, as the side of the glazed ceramic facing the wall is reflected in the cool light of aluminum and the warm glow of brass. Each surface has its own quality, from the extremely reflective to a textured matte, and these differences create a varying vibrancy of reflected light. Larner’s ceramics highlight a symbiotic continuity that troubles definitions of art and environment, object and subject.

Larner’s morphological research thinks likewise with ecological networks, as described in the writings of Fernand Deligny, or by the botanist Anne Pringle, in “Establishing New Worlds: The Lichens of Petersham.” The dialogue between these new works and Larner’s more historic sculpture, “Rubber Divider” — which debuted in the 1989 Whitney Biennial — underscores the interplay between support, form, surface effect, and infrastructure, that has often animated her practice, exploring how our observed experience of the world is innately personal but based on connection. Mindful of the specter of the Anthropocene, it also occasions a meditation on how we distinguish past and present, wondering what forms, what artifacts of human action and intelligence will last, and outlast us.

Distinguished by the unique physical rules that govern its transition, from soft to fragile to almost indestructible, Larner engages clay in part because of its apparent self-determination and pliancy, a kind of material agency and chemical intelligence distinct from our own. The ceramic forms in this exhibition are molded by impressions with ubiquitous forms made with a precision that often goes unnoticed. These forms are softened by the contact of the clay being shaped by them. The consequence of this method of forming is ghostly and transpositional. Among many other potential interpretations and resonances, the exhibition’s title points to these principles, and likens them to the same encodings that inform human perception and the activity of many other life-forms, as we are learning to be of and with.

Liz Larner (b. 1960, Sacramento, CA) lives and works in Bellingham, Washington. She holds a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Gallery hours Tue–Sat 10 am – 6 pm

Exhibition Duration 12 September – 26 October 2024

www.regenprojects.com

Location:
Regen Projects (Hollywood)
6750 Santa Monica Boulevard
90038 Los Angeles, CA
United States