Artist : Loren Erdrich
Title : Closer To Everything (Far Out)
Medium : water, raw pigment, synthetic dye, colored pencil and watercolor crayon on muslin
Dimensions : 91 x 96 cm | 36 x 38 in



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Water, the ultimate disobeyer of boundaries, takes a primary material role in Loren Erdrich's process. Synthetic and organic pigments and dyes are applied unbound, mixed solely with water, to surface. The rigidity of the pigment, medium and ground is destroyed by the water. Amidst these destabilized boundaries forms emerge, all the while appearing to move towards dissolution, where the push/pull between deliberate and unintentional movements is savoured. Erdrich’s relationship to and physical use of media has become content, where water gives rise to a world that celebrates fluidity. She leans towards moments which dissolve the separation between outside and inside, they and you, this world and the other-worldly. This type of vulnerability is usually at odds with a society dependent on boundaries to maintain order. Bodies that menstruate, give birth, are penetrated and suffer metamorphoses have long been portrayed as porous and mutable to the point of seeming monstrous. Thus her work imagines a present day in which softness and vulnerability are venerated instead of shamed, where we reconsider porousness and pliability as potential forces of possibility, strength and even protection. Hybridisation (human/animal/environment/other) finds a comfortable foothold here, where each piece resides on a threshold - a merging point of interiority and intersubjectivity, of desire solicited and desire articulated, of existence and extinction. Viewers are invited to straddle worlds - outside the world as we know it, and inside the sense of water dissolving the distance between things.

Loren Erdrich lives and works in New York, NY. She has been awarded residencies at the Jentel Foundation, Burren College of Art, Santa Fe Art Institute, thrice at Art Farm Nebraska, Sculpture Space and the Vermont Studio Center. Recent notable accomplishments include publication in ARTMAZE Mag's Autumn Issue 14, and exhibitions with The Untitled Space, Proto Gomez and Field Projects in New York and Wasserman Projects in Detroit. Erdrich frequently collaborates with the poet Sierra Nelson, coauthoring the award winning I Take Back the Sponge Cake (published by Rose Metal Press) and Isolation (limited edition, 2020). She holds a MFA from the Burren College of Art at the National University of Ireland, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.


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