Kristen Morgin: My Best To You, Little Girl-Boy

Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Kristen Morgin. Working in unfired clay, Morgin employs Trompe l’oeil and collage to create sculptures that at first glance seem unremarkable, yet with closer inspection are rich, layered and full of metaphor and meaning.

In her debut exhibition at the gallery, Morgin displays an eclectic group of over twenty works. Connected by social and historical reference steeped in Americana, Morgin overlaps cultural icons from different time periods into the same strata. Subject matter is often nostalgic but not sentimental, as with recasting Joey and Chandler from the 1990’s FRIENDS television program as The Hardy Boys detectives, a book series originated in 1929. Morgin’s process creates a visual patina of age that further enhances her fluidity of time.

There is an inherent fragility in Morgin’s materials. Her objects are frequently more delicate than the originals they represent; unfired clay is difficult to support and Morgin uses it as a metaphor for mortality. She contends that the things you really want to keep in this world, you will. Making mass-produced items into one-of-a-kind replicas, Morgin plays on the notion of value. She questions our attachments to material possessions while creating treasures that we become attached to.

Morgin’s work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; The Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston; Fort Worth Contemporary Art Museum; Istanbul Biennial; Denver Art Museum; UCLA Hammer Museum; and New Museum, New York. Her work is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the UCLA Hammer Museum.