Magnolia Laurie “GROUND SHIFT”

frosch & portmann

This event has ended.

frosch&portmann presents GROUND SHIFT, Magnolia Laurie’s third solo show which concurrently marks her inaugural exhibition as a gallery artist.

The paintings in this exhibition reflect the artist’s fascination with the volcanically and geologically active landscape of Iceland. Laurie’s recent travels to this sparsely populated Nordic island country bring a new vocabulary to her work: volcanoes, lava fields, glaciers, geysers, glacial rivers… .
The title GROUND SHIFT nods to the act of traveling and literally shifting ground, altering one’s place in the world and thus one’s view. Magnolia Laurie experienced Iceland as a ground in perpetual motion and transition; impacted by eruptions, tectonic plate shift, glacial melt, and constant weather change. She felt both awe and inconsequentially vulnerable to the whim of, not simply the land, but the whole spinning earth. She stood completely blinded by dense fog, touched rocks that rose up from under the earths crust, stared off through vas t barren lava fields, and humbly climbed atop a glacier as it melted beneath her feet.

Laurie’s most recent paintings are larger in scale and devoid of human presence. Distinct from her past work, where indications of people’s claim and transformation of the land were present, these paintings bear fewer direct references to the manmade and settle the gaze on the idea of the landscape itself. There is painted pure fog, titled there was no circumventing the weather, astonishing rock formations (if we could drill wisdom from a stone) and an almost perceptible volcanic eruption (how to lose without negotiating).

GROUND SHIFT also refers to a change in scale and focus within Magnolia Laurie’s Oeuvre - a shift towards glacier time, tectonic movement, and geological formation.

Born 1974 in Hyannis, MA, Magnolia Laurie lives and works in Baltimore, MD. She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, her P.B.A. from San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA and her M.F.A, from Mount Royal School of Art, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD