Liz Magor: BLOWOUT

Featuring a newly commissioned body of work, Liz Magor: BLOWOUT will be the Canadian artist’s first East Coast institutional solo exhibition. Co-organized by the Carpenter Center and the Renaissance Society, the exhibition will first be on view in Cambridge and then travel to the Chicago (April 27–June 23, 2019). Liz Magor’s (b. 1948) sculpture quietly dramatizes the relationships that develop between objects. Often playing soft against hard, she pairs care with exposure. Adhering to exacting processes of casting, fabrication, and hand-made techniques, Magor raises questions around gender roles, memory, addiction, and the changing value of the objects that come in and out of our lives. Furniture, used textiles (blankets, upholstery, clothing), accessories like gloves and stockings, and plastic and paper packaging all play important roles in her work. Rendered in confounding combinations of sculpture techniques, these soft, pliable elements commingle with liquor bottles, cigarettes, and food, forces that shape our social and domestic lives. Each artwork conjures broad social histories and is driven by intimate, contingent relationships of power and vulnerability.