Beth Lipman: Yours Always

This exhibit debuted new work at Cade Tompkins Projects, November 18, 2011 - January 14, 2012. New work consists of transfer prints, free-standing glass sculpture, and a permanent site-specific installation of glass wallpaper. On view at the gallery will be the sculptural glass works and the transfer prints. The site-specific installation of glass wallpaper was on view in a private dining room. During the course of the exhibition, the private dinning room will be available to view by the public.

Among the featured works in the gallery exhibition are the new works entitled Toppled Basket 2011 and Whatnot I 2010. Toppled Basket 2011 is a large concave, clear-glass basket turned on its side with a cornucopia of fruit, flora, fauna, in the form of a dead bird, and goblets all of which literally topples out of the turned over basket onto the table top. Shards of glass liquid and slumped fruit blend into one expansive and dimensional still life scene. Luxe and delicious, the virtual feast for the eye is at once over abundant and a reminder of our constant longing suspended in a moment in time and held in the glass objects. Lipman plays with the idea of desire and beauty as a visual treat. Whatnot I 2010 consists of a four-tiered wooden étagère on which rests over seventy-five handmolded and blown glass objects which resembles a large-scale Victorian curio piece that would be at home in an 1880’s parlor. The work includes lustrous black glass replicas of the artist’s personal keepsakes and several objects are interpretations of works by other artists; thus creating art within the art. While some of the objects are made through observation, others are made from memory, allowing a haunting play between the real and the imagined. The overall impression is of a uniformly black whole, free of texture and original function and no longer attached to a specific history. Still Life with Bowl of Fruit and Chain 2011 is representative of Lipman’s two-dimensional work which has its basis the traditions of still life painting. Lipman creates tableaus of glass items that are either blown or cold worked and arranges them in her studio. Once the objects are composed, they are photographed to scale, printed directly onto plexi and then disassembled so they may exist only as the resulting photographic print. The rounded forms and smooth surface of the glass capture reflections of the artist and her studio adding the illusion of life into the realm of the fragile and static nature of the photographic image.

Apart from the gallery, and on view during the course of the exhibition, will be a permanent site specific installation of glass wallpaper in a private dining room. Available to be purchased by the yard, like conventional wallpaper, the exquisite kiln formed glass will inhabit the living space. Spreading from each corner of the room, the translucent glass wall patterns conjure the transience of memory by alluding to nature’s fleeting rhythms. The various states of formation in the glass wallpaper echo the natural phenomenon of nature, subtly shifting from solid to fragile and back again. In addition to the pattern of the glass wallpaper, a separate inspiration by the artist will be depicting the nature outside the large windows whose images are creating and casting shadows of branches and leaves onto the wall. The effect is the outside natural world coming inside in the form of glass reflections.