Lauren Rice’s abstractions on paper live at the intersection of painting, drawing, and sculpture. Rice’s approach to painting is idiosyncratic and her paintings incorporate all manner of found and fabricated materials. The cutout is a fundamental aspect of the work in CUT IT LOOSE, a deliberate, repetitive, and labor-intensive act of removal that at once builds the structure of her paintings while simultaneously threatening their destruction.
All cut by hand, the cutouts serve both an aesthetic and conceptual function. For instance, they can participate in the push/pull of color relationships and frame more intuitive gestures, but they also challenge the preciousness of painting. The paintings in CUT IT LOOSE are on the brink of falling apart and are evocative of other collapsing structures, from supernovae to political and social upheaval. Both absorbing and rejecting the baggage of modernist abstract painting, Rice’s paintings incorporate uneven grids, poured swaths of paint, holes and rips, as well as layered bits and pieces that hang off of the painting. Elements of woven and knotted thread are used in the attempt to hold the painting together both literally and aesthetically.
These paintings are both surface and object, as well as a ritual that measures time. Obsession, accident and chance are Rice’s companions in the painting process. In a world that is increasingly screen-based, the errors of the hand are paramount. Each drip, tear, and cut is a tiny testament to small acts of perseverance and exuberance, however imperfect, however fleeting. The cutouts transform the paper from a surface into a porous, three-dimensional object, allowing for ephemeral interactions with light and shadow. Color schemes on the paintings’ versos cast reflective color, breaking boundaries between artwork and wall. Adorned with friendship bracelets and a paint application akin to tie-dye, the paintings in CUT IT LOOSE may recall 70’s psychedelia, but beneath the surface they are spiritually punk.
Lauren Rice is a visual artist based in suburban Richmond, VA. Rice identifies as a painter, however she most often works on and with paper through the combined modalities of collage, painting, drawing and sculpture. Originally from Atlanta, GA, Rice has made her home in many American cities, including Detroit, Brooklyn, Washington DC and Athens, OH. She has exhibited her work in solo, collaborative and group exhibitions at venues such as Cuchifritos Gallery and Project Space (NYC), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (NYC), Neon Heater (Findlay, OH), ICA Baltimore (Baltimore), 1708 Gallery (Richmond), The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia Beach), Transformer (DC) and Spring Break Art Show (NYC), among many others. Rice has been a Fellowship Artist at The Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA and an artist-in-residence at The Luminary in St. Louis, MO. Her work has been published in New American Paintings, Maake Magazine, The Southeast Review, Art in Square Magazine and VAST Magazine. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Longwood University. Rice lives with her husband and artistic collaborator, Brian Barr, and their two children in a house with a garden on a street surrounded by big, old oak trees. For better or worse, Rice is a wearer of rose-colored glasses and is an avid supporter of underdogs.
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