Elizabeth Glaessner "All this happened, more or less"

Elizabeth Glaessner

All this happened, more or less

July 9th—August 15th, 2014
Opening Reception: Wednesday, July 9th, 6-8pm



P.P.O.W is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Elizabeth Glaessner, the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York City. Glaessner’s paintings take elements from traditional history painting and re-contextualize them in a distinctly intimate and otherworldly voice. An exploration of memory, personal history and ritual, Glaessner’s work questions the way in which we relate to and envision our past. Her most recent paintings depict a highly detailed mythology of post-human existence on earth that features anthropomorphic, gelatinous figures in familiar, yet toxic, landscapes. These organic creatures appear as if born from natural forms, like tree trunks and rock formations, in attempt to reconstruct lost histories through the detritus left behind.

Using pure pigments dispersed with water, acrylics and oils, Glaessner creates a beautifully saturated and intricately layered world through various painting techniques that recall the materiality of works by Marlene Dumas and Dana Schutz. The rich media creates illusory qualities that accentuate the amorphous nature of her subjects and their surroundings.

Glaessner combines familiar objects with misunderstood and idiosyncratic portraits, often laden with humor that counterpoint her macabre imagery. Like the landscape paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and El Greco, the forms and figures of Glaessner’s world blend together in an attempt to display a malleable reality. The paintings contain serial imagery of animals and objects considered to be sacred in her post-human world—trees, water, donkeys, boats, and treehouses. Landscapes with mountain peaks, boulders and beaches are shown melding with their inhabitants in fascinating ways, creating an uncanny image of something the viewer recognizes but cannot place.

Elizabeth Glaessner was born in Palo Alto, California in 1984 and grew up in Houston, Texas. After receiving her BA from Trinity University in 2006, she moved to New York and completed her MFA at the New York Academy of Art in 2013. She was awarded a postgraduate fellowship at the New York Academy of Art in 2013, a residency at GlogauAIR Berlin in 2013 and a residency at the Leipzig International Art Programme in 2012. She has been included in group exhibitions in New York, Texas and Germany and has recently been featured in Berlin ArtParasites, Whitewall Magazine, and LUUPS Munich and Leipzig.