Marie Lorenz
BravinLee is pleased to include Marie Lorenz in the Artists Book Vitrine. The books, made over the last few years, are part of Marie Lorenz’ process when developing ideas for sculptures. They contain drawn and collage elements, gauche painting, and contact print techniques. In the largest book, the most recent, Lorenz was imagining the sets of a floating opera that she is producing in collaboration with a composer and an author, set to take place on the Newtown Creek in 2023. On September 10th, Lorenz will present a special sunset performance at 145th and Riverside Park. The project, Gaia/Gyre/Siren is a selection from a new opera by Dana Spiotta (libretto), Kurt Rhode (composition) and Marie Lorenz (instruments and design) with performance by opera singer, Charlotte Mundy.
“We imagine the characters in our opera might look like people who regularly inhabit the waterfront; a canoe club guide, a citizen scientist, the pilot of the waste management barge. As the audience moves through the creek, things begin to change, the spirit of the creek takes shape. I am designing an instrument that measures the frequency of waves, and one that can be played by a sea monster”
Marie Lorenz is a visual artist based in Brooklyn. Her ongoing project ‘The Tide and Current Taxi’ takes participants through New York waterways in boats that she designs and builds, using tidal current to propel the boat. Recent solo exhibitions include Waterways at the Susanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery, Bennington College in Vermont, Ash Heap / Landfill at the Lupin Foundation Gallery, Lamar Dodd School of Art in Athens, Georgia, and Ezekia at Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. Recent group shows include The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn at The Contemporary, in Austin, Texas, and The Commuter Biennial produced with a grant from the Knight Foundation, in Miami, Florida. Lorenz received a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. from Yale and is represented by Jack Hanley Gallery in New York.
