“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present…” Alan W. Watts
Denny Gallery is pleased to announce Yesterday So Fast, a solo exhibition by Lauren Seiden running from February 26 to April 3, 2016.
Yesterday So Fast is Lauren Seiden’s second solo exhibition at Denny Gallery, following Querencia in 2014. Seiden’s sculptures create an environment of suspended time, in which materials defy the movements—falling, collapsing, crunching—that natural forces like gravity should propel them into. Instead, they remain seemingly mid-movement, caught in a transitional state we rarely have access to viewing.
Seiden achieves this effect by applying thick coats of graphite to a range of materials. She has departed from her last body of work, which were sculptural paper works with graphite applied to the surface, to transform steel mesh, thread, marble, and water into the elements of her expanded practice. Many of the new works extend from heights of five to ten feet down to the ground, existing at human scale or just beyond it. Graphite still pervades every surface, injected into the grains of the marble, floating on the surface of water in a pool, coating the thread, and delicately spanning the webs of steel mesh. These near monochrome works create an environment of monuments and memorials, punctuated by a single suspended, burnt orange thread piece, That Fiery Sadness Called Desire. Time is extensively considered, both in the exhibition’s title, “Yesterday So Fast,” and in The Future Is Lost in Yesterday’s News, a work consisting of a stack of newspapers embalmed in thick graphite; illustrating this idea—yesterday’s pressing present already weighed down by the momentum of tomorrow.
As in her earlier work, Seiden manipulates the strength of her materials, giving the viewer a sense that the surfaces are fragile and the forms are imbued with potential energy. Throughout the course of the exhibition, threads may fall, newspapers may shift, and water certainly will evaporate, emphasizing the need for the viewer to embody their experience of the work in the present.
Lauren Seiden received her B.A. in Painting and Drawing from Bennington College in Vermont. Her recent exhibitions include “Colors” at Louis B. James, New York City, “Radiate” at Circle Culture Gallery, Berlin, “The Suspended Line” at Josée Bienvenu, New York City, “Action+Object+Exchange” at the Drawing Center in New York City, and solo exhibitions at the Mattatuck Museum, Connecticut, and Denny Gallery. Seiden received the AOL and Chuck Close “25 for 25” Grant Award in 2010, and in 2014 was selected to participate in The Drawing Center’s “Open Sessions” program.