Los Angeles, CA (1 June 2011) – LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) is proud to announce this year’s Wall Work commission by Seattle based artist Margie Livingston entitled Twenty Gallons to debut 16 June 2011 and designed to activate LACE’s monumental archway and greet our visitors for the coming year. Using acrylic paint as both a surface and structural material, Livingston will cover the 15-foot tall archway in LACE’s front gallery with a series of panels constructed entirely from, as her title suggests, twenty gallons of acrylic paint.
Originally trained as an abstract painter, Livingston’s early work approached the subject of landscape through the lens of geometric abstraction, exploring the intersection of the architectural grid and organic forms within the conventions of the two-dimensional picture plane. In her recent work, she has inverted the relationship between content and material, with the canvas having been abandoned entirely in favor of exploiting paint for its sculptural properties, yet still maintaining a reference to abstract expressionism that is both witty and sincere.
Livingston deliberately conflates an expressionist, processed based approach of abstract painting and the structured, reductive approach of minimalism to create self-described “paint-objects.” The artist states, “As I work, my goal is to keep the process open so that accident and discovery can combine with invention to make works that surprise me. In hopes of making work that is not merely personal but also cognizant of history and relevant to our time.”
Each year, LACE commissions a new Wall Work for its front gallery. Past projects have featured artists Nick Lowe, Ami Tallman and Jason Yates.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Margie Livingston was born in Vancouver, Washington. She received her M.F.A. in painting from the University of Washington in 1999. Her awards include a residency at the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute in Shenzhen, China, in 2008; a Fulbright Scholarship in 2001; the Arts Innovator Award in 2010, the Neddy Fellowship in Painting in 2009, and the Betty Bowen Memorial Award in 2006. In January, she had her first solo show at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. She is represented by Luis De Jesus in Culver City and Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle. Livingston’s work resides in the permanent collections of the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the City of Seattle, King County, the Whatcom Museum, and the Henry Art Gallery. She lives and works in Seattle.
