January 24 – March 21, 2015

Opening reception: Saturday, January 24, 6–8 pm

Artist Talk: 7 pm

Lora Reynolds is pleased to announce Blockbuster, an exhibition of sculpture and drawing by Arlene Shechet. This is the artist's first solo presentation at Lora Reynolds Gallery.

Arlene Shechet's sculptures defy categorization. Some are figurative, some are architectural, others resemble melting vessels or growing biological forms—but they nearly always seem off balance or on the verge of collapse. As Peter Schjeldahl said in the New Yorker, Shechet is "an artist with energy and second-nature mastery to burn...Her works in fired clay are visceral masses and heaped strands on brick or cracked-wood-block pedestals and stools. Some verge on the animate; others surge sideways as if in a wind or an undersea current."

Working with clay is a rich experience for Shechet. In the artist's own words: "The things that I build...grow over months because I might be able to add only one inch of material in a day. I'm extending forms and I'm challenging balance and gravity in such a way that they always want to collapse or tip over...In fact, often things do collapse or fall over, and many don't make it, but I love working on that precarious edge. For me, that has obvious emotional, psychological, and philosophical meaning."

In a reciprocal relationship to her sculpture practice, the "drawings," reflect Shechet's physical sculpture-making process. They are made entirely with pigmented, liquid paper pulp in collaboration with the master papermakers at Dieu Donné in New York. Unique wall-hanging reliefs, they are multi-dimensional casts of objects on Shechet's studio table that defy the boundaries normally associated with paper-based works. Shechet engages with vividly colored paper pulp as if it were a ceramic glaze, much as she uses glaze in her ceramic pieces as if it were paint.

Roberta Smith described Shechet's work in the New York Times as “terrific, full of references yet almost debt-free...sexy, devout, ugly, and beautiful all at the same time, they move effortlessly between art and religion and East and West, and from painting and sculpture to craft and ritual."

Arlene Shechet lives and works in New York City and upstate New York. She is currently at work on a 20-year survey exhibition, All at Once, opening in June 2015 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, with an accompanying book co-published by DelMonico/Prestel. Her recent, highly-acclaimed solo exhibition Meissen Recast at the Museum of Art, RISD, in Providence, Rhode Island, (January to July, 2014) has produced its own book published by Greg Miller, to be released in May. Shechet is featured in the current season of PBS TV's Art21, and is the subject of much critical acclaim including a 2012 Art in America cover story. Some of her many accolades include a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. Her work is represented in important public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Princeton Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum.