ESCHER’S LOVERS: Lauren Clay & Nicholas Moenich
KDR305, Miami
Sept 4 - Oct 9, 2022
KDR305 presents Escher’s Lovers, a two-person exhibition by artists Lauren Clay and Nicholas Moenich.
The gallery is transformed into a mesmerizing space by Lauren Clay’s illusionistic wallpaper pulling the viewer into an Escher-like dimension. Works sit atop the complex wallpaper, with areas of negative space extending inward as Nicholas Moenich’s paintings and Clay’s sculptures hang simultaneously, bringing forth a variety of pictorial spaces and materials - sucking the viewer in and pushing the picture plane out, suggesting multiple entries and exit points. Architectural fragments appear, disappear, and reappear again.
Body-like and serpentine structures slip in and out. Referencing psychedelics, illuminated manuscripts and high modernism drift abound, implying a possible quest for a fictional utopia- round and round and up and down - just as an Escher staircase would. Eyes stare back to pause the viewer - “if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.”
Up the stairs, a tiny respite hangs after one physically ascends. Knotted and fragmented forms overflow, and two drawings, one from each artist, hangs in the balance with perfect tension to compliment one another- a snake and a garden, repulsion, and attraction- implying that some sort of transcendence may be possible if only in the fleeting present.
Lauren Clay grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1982. She received a BFA in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work has been widely exhibited nationally, including solo exhibitions at Bosse & Baum, London, UK, Cris Worley Fine Arts, Dallas, TX, Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York; Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta; Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Denver; and Savannah College of Art and Design, with site-specific installations at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY; Arts Brookfield, NY; Art In Buildings, NY; and Paradise City, Seoul, South Korea. Press includes The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Artsy, Bomb Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtInfo, Hi-Fructose, and the Washington Post. Clay has been an artist in residence at Henry Street Settlement, New York, NY. Her editioned artist book, Subtle Body, published by Small Editions NY, is included in the library collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Brooklyn Museum of Art. Clay is a 2019 recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and is a current resident artist at the RAir Foundation in Roswell, NM.
Nicholas Moenich was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1985 and received a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA from Hunter College. Solo exhibitions at 1969 Gallery, New York, NY, Furnace, Falls Village, CT; Underdonk, Brooklyn, NY; Wild Blue Yonder: Kari Cholnoky & Nicholas Moenich at Disturb the Neighbors, New York, NY; Disturb the Neighbors at NADA NY (2018); D’Agostino & Fiore, New York. Press includes New American Paintings, Art Maze Magazine, Artspace, Hyperallergic, and Two Coats of Paint. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Cincinnati and the University of New Mexico and a visiting artist resident at Anderson Ranch Art Center near Aspen, Colorado. He was awarded the Tony Smith Award in 2011 and the 2019 Hopper Prize. Moenich is a 2020 recipient of the Lighthouse Works Fellowship, a 2019-2020 recipient of the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Award, and a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Painting from The New York Foundation for the Arts.
KDR305 is a contemporary exhibition space housed in a 102 yr old cottage in the heart of Little Havana, Miami, FL. The exhibition opens Sunday, September 4th, 2–5 PM. Rideshare is encouraged as there is little public street parking. For images, information and appointments, please contact katia@kdr305.com.
Lauren Clay
Above and below, 2022
oil, paper pulp, modeling paste, on panel
28 x 23 x 2.5 inches
Nicholas Moenich
Untitled ((Green) Grudge July), 2022
acrylic on canvas
26 x 22 inches
Nicholas Moenich
Untitled (Inferno 2022), 2022
acrylic on canvas
26 x 22 inches
Lauren Clay
Bisected Emerald Arch, 2022
oil on paper pulp, modeling paste on panel 31 x 25 x 3 inches
Nicholas Moenich
Untitled (Push It 2022), 2022
acrylic on canvas
40 x 30 inches
Nicholas Moenich
Untitled (July 30, 2022), 2022
colored pencil on paper
14 x 11 in
Lauren Clay
Ad Fontes (In The Garden), 2022
Colored pencil on paper
15 x 21 inches
Lauren Clay
Salon, 2022
pigment print on vinyl wall covering