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CLAIRE OLIVER - ARTIST: Beth Lipman

221 views · Published 2 May 2015 · 6:15 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: NYC GALLERY OPENINGS · 2015 · Entertainment

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Beth Lipman
Alone and the Wilderness

Opening reception with the Artist: Thursday, 
April 30, from 6-8 p.m.
Exhibition Dates: April 30 - June 13, 2015

Have human beings permanently changed our 
planet? What on its surface seems a simple 
question, has sparked a new altercate between 
Geologists and environmental advocates over 
what to call the current epoch.

It is a Sisyphean effort to cajole perfection from 
our tumultuous and imperfect world. Ever 
cognizant of this Lipman creates visual 
metaphors that represent both humanity’s 
abundant success and its potential, or inevitable 
decline. In an instant the Artist is a stand-in for 
Man and the environment. Lipman’s
process of sculpting and blowing records her 
ability to control the material as the work 
begins to form. As in Life, the Artist 
reminds us to embrace what we may at first see 
as imperfections - every detail has a role to play 
in the composition.

Situated center stage in the main gallery, 
viewers will come upon Laid (Time-) Table with 
Cycads, a fifteen-foot long sculpture the Artist 
has created from transparent glass, wood, 
adhesive and paint. 

Merging the genres of still life and landscape 
Lipman juxtaposes our current era with ages 
past. The work’s still life composition references 
historic objects attributed to the splendor and 
excess of the Anthropocene layer that humanity 
will leave on Earth. Drawings, books, chalices,
food, rope, and a viola can be found scattered 
among crumpled tablecloths and bits of other 
castoff detritus.

Beneath the table, a shimmering 
phantasmagoric paleo-landscape unfolds, 
alluding to deep time. The different levels of 
Laid (Time-) Table serve as simulacra for the 
earth’s strata that mark the geological 
history of our planet.

The verdant foliage populating the work is 
informed by the Artist’s time at The 
Smithsonian Museum during a research 
fellowship. It was here that Lipman was inspired 
to create an interface between her iconic 
objects of recent history and ancient botany. 

The shimmering spikes of the extremely ancient 
Cycads that pierce the table in three locations 
are the result of biotic interactions over millions 
of years. They invade the accumulation of
objects left in civilizations wake as a startling 
reminder that even in the most extreme 
circumstances the force of nature endures.
Glimpsed through the tall palm fronds of Laid 
(Time) Table, the far wall of the main Gallery 
holds Windfall, a time based work incorporating 
48 hours of time lapse photography. Featuring a 
static gazing ball, which stands in as our 
surrogate, the viewer sees our world reflected in 
the surfaces of the sculpture, whose form and 
density buckle and twist the landscape. Lipman 
situated the scene en plein air, directly 
informing the qualities of the still life
composition, as light, weather, animals and 
insects collaborated in the final arrangement.
Through her meticulous attention to detail and 
intense creative vision Lipman has presented 
the viewer with an astoundingly beautiful 
interpretation of death, decay and life that 
defies it’s past, preserves in the present and
gives hope to the future.

Alone and the Wilderness is Beth Lipman’s 
third solo exhibition with Claire Oliver Gallery. 
The Artist has received numerous awards 
including a USA Berman Bloch Fellowship, a 
Pollock Krasner Grant, the Virginia Groot
Foundation Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany 
Foundation Grant. Most recently, she 
completed Aspects of (American) Life, a 
seminal commission for the New Britain 
Museum of American Art (CT). 

Lipman has exhibited her work internationally at 
such institutions as the Ringling Museum of Art 
(FL), ICA/MECA (ME), RISD Museum (RI),
Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), and Gustavsbergs 
Konsthall (Sweden). Her work has been 
acquired by many important museums 
including the Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), the 
Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), the
Kemper Museum for Contemporary Art (MO), 
and the Jewish Museum (NY).

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