LIZ MAGOR

Liz Magor’s work finds its center in the peripheral, often replicating the overlooked trappings of daily life and re-presenting them in new contexts. Activated by an interest in the covert, these constructions blur the lines between reality, imagination, and simulation. Creating new and expanded associations, Magor simultaneously draws attention to the objects’ original intentions to satisfy our need for protection, comfort, and affirmation. Liz Magor lives and works in Vancouver. In 2017, Magor’s work was the subject of traveling survey at the Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg and Migros Museum, Zurich, and opening at MAMAC, Nice on November 17. Other recent solo exhibitions of her work include: Centre d’art contemporain d'Ivry - le Crédac, Paris (2016), Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal, Montreal (2016), the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015), Peep-hole, Milan (2015), Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver (2014), and Triangle France, Marseilles (2013). In addition, she has had solo exhibitions at Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2008), the Power Plant, Toronto (2003) and the Vancouver Art Gallery (2002). Magor participated in Documenta 8, Kassel (1987), and the 41st Venice Biennale, Venice (1984).

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The Rise and The Fall

March 7 - June 9, 2023

Organised in collaboration with the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, the exhibition will subsequently tour to The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin (14 July-24 September 2023) and Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (26 October 2023 – January 2024).

‘The Rise and The Fall,’ by Liz Magor presents a focused selection of works from the last five years that explore our relationship with the material world. Working with ubiquitous, manufactured objects that often go unnoticed, she transforms them using inventive sculptural techniques that locate them on a spectrum between still life and the uncanny. Things such as blankets, containers, clothing and toys are found in relationships that generate a sense of care and meaning beyond their original use or function.

One Bedroom Apartment

September 26, 2020 – December 19, 2020

Best known for sculptures made from both found and cast objects, Liz Magor is interested in the cyclical culture of production and consumption, how we assign value to things, the utilitarian and non-utilitarian functions of objects, and our emotional and psychological attachments to them. Her work addresses the latent qualities of ordinary things that influence our acquisition, use, and disposal of them and how, sometimes, the power that these objects hold can even supersede our human relationships.

BLOWOUT

April 27 - June 23, 2019

For more than four decades, Liz Magor’s practice has quietly dramatized the relationships that develop among objects. Drawing on materials familiar from daily life, she carefully pairs elements of tenderness and exposure, often playing soft against hard, weak against strong, hand-made against mass-produced. Each artwork conjures broad social histories and is driven by intimate, contingent dynamics of power, desire, and vulnerability. Manipulating found objects much in the way an author gathers fragments of stories, the Canadian artist brings them together into a newly commissioned body of work that she describes as “a collection of tiny intense narratives.” Here, she uses Mylar to create clear plastic support forms recalling commercial packaging for a number of sculptural “agents”—stuffed toys that she alters in various ways. In another installation, thirty pairs of secondhand shoes line a low structure, each displayed within its own box amidst elaborate embellishments. Magor uses sculptural techniques like casting, containing, cutting, and reattaching to create these hybrids, which she arranges into sprawling vignettes.

BLOWOUT

January 31 - March 24, 2019

Liz Magor’s sculpture quietly dramatizes the relationships that develop between objects. Often playing soft against hard, she pairs care with exposure. Adhering to exacting processes of casting, fabrication, and hand-made techniques, Magor raises questions around gender roles, memory, addiction, and the changing value of the objects that come in and out of our lives. Featuring a newly commissioned body of work, this exhibition will be the Canadian artist’s first East Coast institutional solo exhibition. A publication—the artist’s first US catalog in 15 years—will record this new work alongside newly commissioned texts by the exhibition’s curators and writers Sheila Heiti and Mitch Speed.

LIZ MAGOR

Biography

LIZ MAGOR AT FOCAL POINT GALLERY

The Rise and The Fall

March 7 - June 9, 2023

LIZ MAGOR AT ESKER FOUNDATION

One Bedroom Apartment

September 26, 2020 – December 19, 2020

LIZ MAGOR AT RENAISSANCE SOCIETY

BLOWOUT

April 27 - June 23, 2019

LIZ MAGOR AT CARPENTER CENTER FOR THE VISUAL ARTS

BLOWOUT

January 31 - March 24, 2019