Emil Lukas Exhibition

Sperone Westwater

[Image: the location of possible and impossible moves (2018)]

This event has ended.

Sperone Westwater presents new work by Emil Lukas. His fourth exhibition at the gallery is comprised of stacks, thread paintings, bubble wrap paintings and larvae paintings.

Lukas’ work continues to demonstrate a keen interest in issues of perspective and process. The artist’s last exhibition at Sperone Westwater saw a return to the stack format, comprised of dozens of individual works layered one on top of the other to constitute the sculpture, which engaged him early in his career. In his newest stack works, he employs elements that suggest a continuous state of flux and becoming-structural fragments, rolls of larva-inked paper, thread and tubing. Intended to be experienced as chapters-and documented as such in books made by the artist-the individual layers disassemble and on close inspection reveal more about the wide-ranging yet interrelated strains of Lukas’ practice.

For years, Lukas has placed live insects into puddles of ink and let them form chance patterns on the surfaces of his works. The new work the location of possible and impossible moves shows Lukas pushing this process further, incorporating new layers and materials into the individual panels. In many of these, he uses different kinds of paper, layered to achieve varying degrees of transparency, dimensionality and optical effects.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1964, Emil Lukas has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. His work is in important private and public collections, including the Panza Collection (Italy), the Dakis Joannou Collection (Greece), the Anderson Collection (California), Baltimore Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Arkansas), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, North Carolina).