Elizabeth Leach Gallery is also excited to present MK Guth, Distant Dreamer, an exhibition of new multi-media works that recall and expand upon recent and ongoing projects within the artist’s wide-reaching oeuvre.
In this impressive gathering of recent work, Guth has revisited her own archive and cherry-picked some of the classic material and thematic highlights that have helped define her output over the last 30 years. Full of adjacent tangents and aestheticized renditions, the result is what one could call a “performance” by an indomitable artist very much connected to her own thesis.
Her forms and gestures seem endless, but there are certain strands that remain constant, one of these signatures being her use of fibers. Guth assumed this thread again to create two stunning, braided tapestries that refer to specific galaxies as observed from Earth. These knotted, wall-mounted reliefs are loaded with sensuous tangles and a patina developed by being bent out of shape through the laborious process of articulating forms outside of their material’s intended use.
Guth’s work often contains strong performative elements, eventuating into objects and ephemera that are activated by social contact, but here she turns to a solitary studio practice that emphasizes a more literal application of materials, and the consequent production of discrete, disparate sculptures. Among them includes an ongoing series of work that involves repurposed chandeliers. Dangling shoulder height and embellished with found and clashing pendalogues, these gaudy relics of yesteryear wear opulence in abject defiance - their utility minimized, grandiosity tamped and our physical relationship to them confused. Taken all together, we see an artist’s cosmic musing and navel-gazing manifest.
