23 Mar 2015

Annette Lemieux at Kent Fine Art

One can approach the work of Annette Lemieux from any number of perspectives. Exploring Sign/Symbol/Language and the Loaded Grid, Lemieux dissects the oeuvre of Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and at times the mythology of Philip Guston. Fundamentally interdisciplinary in content and form, Lemieux's works continue her exploration and explication of cultural constructs and how objects that reflect the self define the self as well. As recently noted by Robert Pincus-Witten, 'Her fusion of conceptualism with a studio practice that remains respectful of abstract painting generally, and of minimalism specifically, is unique.'

Annette Lemieux works from a repertoire of real objects and images from films and books featuring reproductions of historical photographs from the forties and fifties, which she calls her 'landscape.' In her recent show entitled Unfinished Business at the Carpenter Center, Harvard University, Lemieux explored the territory between object, mediated memory, personal experience and cultural history that has informed her practice for three decades. Lemieux's objects and imagery derive directly from the world as it exists, not from the recesses of a private imagination that must search itself to produce the substance of invented images.

With representative examples of her work in over 50 public collections, Lemieux has been the focus of two recent exhibitions organized by the Krannert Art Museum and Harvard University. There is an excellent publication serving as the most comprehensive overview of her work to date.

Lelia Amalfitano, Judith Hos Fox, Rosetta Brooks, Peggy Phelan, Robert Pincus-Witten. The Strange Life of Objects: The Art of Annette Lemieux. Urbana-Champaign: Krannert Art Museum, c. 2010.

Recent interviews include:
Beyond the Canvas: A Conversation with Annette Lemieux by Francine Koslow Miller. Sculpture Magazine, January/February 2014.

Kent Fine Art is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 6. For further information and images, please contact Elyse Harary (eharary@kentfineart.net).