Liz Glynn: Untitled Fragment (Hand to Mouth)
2015
Photo: Maris Hutchinson
Liz Glynn
Untitled Fragment (Hand to Mouth), 2015
Edition of 20 with 6 artist’s proofs
Cast bronze, 16 × 4 ¼ x 5 in (40.6 × 10.8 × 12.7 cm)
Produced by Lisa Ivorian-Jones for the New Museum
Each piece is hand-detailed by the artist, and due to the nature of this process, each object bears unique variations.
Untitled Fragment (Hand to Mouth) is part of a new body of sculptures by Liz Glynn that explores the pressures of the high-performance economy and the unintended consequences of the pressures to perform. Alluding to the sculpture’s disembodied form, the subtitle Hand to Mouth refers obliquely to a certain desperation or sense of need. Harkening back to found fragments of long-lost ancient sculptures, the work evokes a narrative, while leaving much of the story open for the viewer to fill in.
Glynn’s work examines human ambition, desire, and monumentality through objects and actions. She frequently draws upon epic historical narratives, literature, architecture, and artifacts to consider cycles of growth and decay, and the possibility of change in the present tense. In 2013, she completed a cycle of performances at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)—entitled [de-]lusions of grandeur: monumentality and other myths—that plumbed the mythology of modern and Minimalist sculpture. The permanent works that resulted, her first large-scale series of bronze sculptures, The Myth of Singularity (2014), will be on view at LACMA from November 2015 through May 2016. Glynn is currently developing a larger body of work that explores the history of technology and the question of value in an increasingly ephemeral economy.
Liz Glynn was born in Boston in 1981. She received a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University in 2003 and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2008. Her work has been featured in a number of important museum exhibitions, including the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A.” biennial (2012), for which she was named a Mohn Award finalist; the J. Paul Getty Museum’s “Pacific Standard Time” (2013); and the New Museum’s “The Generational: Younger than Jesus” (2009), curated by Lauren Cornell, Massimiliano Gioni, and Laura Hoptman. Recently, Glynn was the subject of the one-person exhibition “RANSOM ROOM” at SculptureCenter, New York (2014). She has also presented large-scale installations and performances as part of Frieze Projects (2013), Performa 11 (2011), and the migrating public art project Station to Station. Glynn is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, which recently held her solo exhibition “PATHOS (The Blind Exercises)” (2015).