frosch&portmann
VOLTA NY 2017

Magnolia Laurie: Much of my work is derived from an interest in human nature and our complicated relationship to the landscape. Weaving abstraction in and out of pictorial space, the paintings nod to the sublime and the history of landscape painting, while also acknowledging the hopeful yet melancholic cycles of decay, adaptation, and perseverance.

These recent paintings place the viewer inside looking out. We are near, but isolated from the landscape outside. Snowstorms and dense fog, stark desert heat and barren forest are set in contrast to the calm of the contained, domesticated nature of houseplants. The unpredictable outside is distanced by the slight framing device of a windowsill, a partially drawn shade, or the foreground intrusion of a rubber plant.

Intimate in scale, some paintings are shown on the walls while others occupy custom-made wooden structures that hover between sculpture and furniture. Included with these structures are a number of collected objects such as worn bricks, mirror tiles, and potted plants. Through placement and composition, these different objects create an installation that draws attention to vantage point, while indirectly referencing current and historical citations, the things we hold on to is a series of glimpses into relationships between the sublime and the mundane, exploration and travel, possession and occupation, shelter and ruin.
These recent paintings place the viewer inside looking out. We are near, but isolated from the landscape outside. Snowstorms and dense fog, stark desert heat and barren forest are set in contrast to the calm of the contained, domesticated nature of houseplants. The unpredictable outside is distanced by the slight framing device of a windowsill, a partially drawn shade, or the foreground intrusion of a rubber plant.

Intimate in scale, some paintings are shown on the walls while others occupy custom-made wooden structures that hover between sculpture and furniture. Included with these structures are a number of collected objects such as worn bricks, mirror tiles, and potted plants. Through placement and composition, these different objects create an installation that draws attention to vantage point, while indirectly referencing current and historical citations, the things we hold on to is a series of glimpses into relationships between the sublime and the mundane, exploration and travel, possession and occupation, shelter and ruin.