November 2013

UNC at Greensboro, NC, Features Works by Annie Lapin

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro is presenting Annie Lapin: Falk Visiting Artist, on view at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, through Jan. 5, 2014.

Los Angeles-based artist Annie Lapin draws much of her inspiration from recollections of historical works of art. Working from these memories and her imagination, Lapin builds up her images in layers, allowing them to develop over time. The resulting works are highly evocative impressions that capture the experience of encountering historical landscape painting. Her exhibition at the Weatherspoon includes recent and new works that evoke landscape yet remain open-ended and abstract.

Lapin is fascinated with the aura of painting, that is, the way both the originality and materiality of a painting infuse it with a particular status and value. Landscape painting carries a particularly strong socio-historical weight, and, in her new work, Lapin finds the rich formal and technical characteristics of the Romantic landscape a fruitful context for investigation. She combines the signs, effects and compositional elements of this genre with bright colors, wide brushstrokes and heavy impasto. In viewing a work by Lapin, what may first appear to us as a representation of a tree or the sky, quickly morphs into abstraction. Her luxurious paintings both feed our desire for illusion and confront us with their own materiality.

Lapin is the Fall 2013 Falk Visiting Artist at the Weatherspoon Art Museum and the Art Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The exhibition is organized by Xandra Eden, Curator of Exhibitions. Special thanks to Assistant Professor of Art, Jennifer Meanley, and the 2013/14 Falk Visiting Artist Committee. We are grateful to the lenders and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles for their support.

Annie Lapin (b. 1978, Washington, DC, lives in Los Angeles, CA) received her BA from Yale University and MFA from UCLA. Solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Pasadena Museum of California Art, and Grand Arts, Kansas City. Her work has been featured in gallery exhibitions internationally and in group exhibitions at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY Purchase, and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas. Her works are included in numerous private and public collections including the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. She is represented by Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles.

On Nov. 12, 2013, at noon - Noon @ the ‘Spoon Public Tour: Annie Lapin: Falk Visiting Artist, offering a 20-minute docent-led tour. Free. For a complete, updated list of programs, visit (http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu).

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 336/334-5770 or visit (http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu/).

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