NEW YORK
Lynn Umlauf: Works 1980 - 2019
January 14 - February 28, 2020
Zürcher Gallery presents their third solo exhibition of works by Lynn Umlauf (b. 1942) in New York. This exhibition focuses on the artist’s paintings from the 1980s and her movement into installation in the early 2000s with Cosmos (2002) and Evolution (2006). Featured in the exhibition is her newest installation, October 15, 2019, Mademoiselle and related works on paper.
Published to accompany this exhibition is the first Lynn Umlauf catalog covering her works from 1970 to the present, which includes an essay from 1981 by Klaus Kertess and an interview from 1977 with David Shapiro. There will be a book signing event with Lynn Umlauf on Saturday, January 25 from 3 - 5 PM.
“As the shapes become more organic they tend to pull in on themselves with a centripetal force. One piece of canvas can now be host to two or three shapes of paper creating a constant tension between the shape made by the exterior contour and the shapes within. Each interior shape is still cut from a separate piece of paper, asserting itself independently but reacting to its neighbors and the canvas. The canvas begins to act more as the wall did previously. Wall, canvas, and paper become multiple layers of skin, adhering to and peeling away from each other. They all constantly for and re-form each other”
-Klaus Kertess, originally published in the exhibition catalog for Seven Artists at the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY, 1981
“I want to take the sensuality out of my works and leave only the physicality. I don’t refer to
air and space I refer to light. A painting becomes so solid on the wall, the surface of it and the materials of it are more important than what it could look like. It’s not building or mountains or trees or people, it’s a shape that has been carved. The shape has been carved out of a piece of paper out of a piece of canvas and out of a piece of wall. We start with an object, as if we had come from a store. And to break it down into a personal shape I have to connect the top and the bottom and then the sides. From the top to the bottom is a cutting, and the sides – how much off the parallel they are going to be. Cutting is like making a clear drawing, like a drawing without ink. Not just without ink but when you cut away, cutting off the edges of the object, you’re giving the centre of a shape a meaning, you’re giving a centre to that shape. So that’s one shape, and then it has to project, relate to what the other shapes are within the work.”
-Lynn Umlauf with David Shapiro, originally published in Flash Art No. 74/75 May - June 1977
Lynn Umlauf was born in 1942 in Austin, Texas. She achieved her BFA in 1965 and MFA in 1969 at the University of Texas at Austin. She also took classes at the Academia di Belli Arti in Florence, Italy and the Art Students League in New York. Her rst solo exhibition in New York was at Hal Bromm Gallery in 1980. Umlauf’s rst museum exhibition was the Whitney Biennial in 1975. She has shown extensively in Italy, France and the United States. Her work is in the collections of MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY and Reading Public Museum, Reading, PA.
For all inquiries, please contact Ernesto Renda, studio@galeriezurcher.com.
Images of ALL the works in the exhibition and installation photos can be viewed online at www. galeriezurcher.com. Lynn Umlauf exhibition catalogs will be available for $20.00, and can be purchased at Zürcher Gallery, NY or ordered over the phone at (212)-777-0790 (mailing only available for customers outside of New York City.)