Marilyn Lerner: Harmonies
Curator-Mentor: Deborah Kass

September 8 — October 15, 2016
Opening Reception Thursday, September 8, 6-8pm

Inside Outside, 2016. Oil on wood. 32" x 24" — *Inside Outside,* 2016. Oil on wood. 32" x 24"

CUE Art Foundation is pleased to present Harmonies, an exhibition of new paintings by New York-based artist Marilyn Lerner, curated by Deborah Kass. The exhibition is comprised of a series of vibrant, geometric abstract paintings on wooden panels and shaped supports. These nuanced works are informed by Lerner’s wide-ranging travels, as well as her fascination with music, particularly Algerian Raï folk music. Created over the past two years, the paintings in this exhibition are the latest embodiment of a singular, rigorous practice—an exploration of color and form that Lerner has pursued for decades.

Deborah Kass notes: “Precision and sophisticated color give these paintings their jazzy glamour. For all the work’s sense of spiritual awareness, it is the paintings’ formal pyrotechnics and materiality that anchor them in this physical world, as they jump around and wow us with trippy visuals and precision pleasures.”

Marilyn Lerner was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She received her BS from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, and MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Butler Gallery Museum, Kilkenny, Ireland, curated by Anna O’ Sullivan; John Good Gallery, NY; and Robert Morrison Gallery, NY. Group exhibitions include Full Tilt, curated by John Yau, Novella Gallery, NY; Susan Hartnett, Ralph Humphrey, Marilyn Lerner, Donna Nelson, curated by Klaus Kertess, Mary Boone Gallery, NY; and Aspects of Abstract Painting Since 1970, curated by Lilly Wei, Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, NY, amongst others. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Individual Artist Grant; the Indo American fellowship Fulbright Scholarship; the McDowell Colony Fellowship; and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts; The New York State Council on the Arts; and the National Endowment For the Arts. Her work has been featured in the Irish Times, New York Times, Artforum, Arts Magazine, Art in America, Hyperallergic, BOMB Magazine, and Flash Art.

Curator Deborah Kass is an artist whose paintings examine the intersection of art history, popular culture and the self. Her work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum, The Museum of Fine Art, Boston, The Cincinnati Museum, The New Orleans Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institute, Fogg/ Harvard Museum, as well as other museums and private collections.

Kass’s work has been shown nationally and internationally including at the Venice Biennale, the Istanbul Biennale, and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. The Andy Warhol Museum presented Deborah Kass, Before and Happily Ever After, a mid-career retrospective in 2012, accompanied by a catalogue published by Rizzoli, with essays by Irving Sandler, Griselda Pollack, John Waters and others. Her monumental sculpture OY/YO located in Brooklyn Bridge Park has become an instant icon, appearing on the front page of the New York Times and is a beloved destination in NYC.

A show of Kass’s paintings will open at Brand New Gallery Milan, Italy in September 2016. Her print Vote Hillary is an official commemorative print for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. The Neuberger Museum has commissioned an installation to inaugurate their new space on 42nd Street in Fall 2016.

In 2014, Kass was inducted into the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame. She is a member of the Board of the Andy Warhol Foundation. Kass’s work is represented by Paul Kasmin Gallery.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 32 page color catalogue, with texts by Deborah Kass and Anna Tome. Available free of charge to gallery visitors.

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