PRESS RELEASE
Fran Siegel's latest series of monumental drawings cull visual references from the sprawling urban topography surrounding the artist's Los Angeles studio-an idiosyncratic unplanned layout, where architecture collides with natural land contours. Through an intricate process of accumulative layering, drawing and stitching, Siegel pieces together multiple aerial viewpoints that explore shifts in light, perspective and atmosphere, while implying continuing motion outside of the frame. This instability proves a stark contrast to the contemplative otherness found in the fixed position of traditional nineteenth century landscape representation, and results in a rich, complex, oscillating expression of displacement that reflects our contemporary nomadic relationship to place.
Furthering her exploration of dimensional drawing, as well as the effect that durational changes and shifting light have on space, Siegel will construct a site-specific installation in the gallery for this exhibition. The installation-a volumetric woven structure of wire, porcelain and incandescent light-creates a highly subjective space that extends the piece beyond its physical materials. The show's title, Transient Borders, refers to this unique construction of space. Through overlapping and fluctuating patterns of edges, images and densities, the work takes on a mutable quality that redefines the boundaries of both subject and medium.
Fran Siegel's work was recently included in "Slash" at the Museum of Art and Design in New York. Siegel was the 2007 United States representative for the IX International Biennial of Cuenca, Ecuador. Recent site-specific projects include From and About Place: 7 artists from Los Angeles at The Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, and Rogue Wave at LA Louver.
Siegel has just been awarded a 2010 California Community Foundation Fellowship funded by the Getty Trust. She will be developing a project later this fall during a residency grant at the Bogliasco Foundation outside Genoa Italy. Previous awards include an Individual Artist Grant from The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (C.O.L.A.), The American Academy in Rome, and The Fund for U.S. Artists.