Visual Arts Alumna Joan Linder '96 in 'Slightly Surreal Suburbia' at Cristin Tierney Gallery
Work by Visual Arts alumna Joan Linder '96 is available for viewing in Slightly Surreal Suburbia, an exhibition at Cristin Tierney Gallery, starting June 18, 2021. Linder's work appears alongside paintings by Maureen O'Leary in this two-person exhibition, which will run until August 6, 2021.
The unique culture and atmosphere of suburban life has captivated imaginations for decades, and this feeling was only heightened by the stay-at-home orders of early 2020. In her work for Slightly Surreal Suburbia, Linder—whose work has long explored the passage of time—has captured the feelings of anxiety, boredom, voyeurism, and the strange flexibility of time that she experienced while confined to her suburban home during lockdown.
Using paper, foam, and duct tape, Linder creates life-sized replicas of objects or people she encounters. For Slightly Surreal Suburbia, she presents "objects that capture the anxiety we all felt in our homes in 2020. They approximate the items they represent, but close looking reveals small imperfections and touches of the artist's hand."
One such sculpture is "Wet Ones," a reproduction of a container of the popular antibacterial wipes, created with slices of tape so that the resemblance is approximate, just slightly off—ultimately highlighting the surreality of a year like 2020, when such a mundane object was highly in-demand, practically worth fighting over.
Slightly Surreal Suburbia is available for viewing at Cristin Tierney Gallery in NYC, Tuesdays through Saturdays until August 6th.
Joan Linder (b. 1970) is known for her labor-intensive drawings that contain thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of tiny lines. She has exhibited at Albright College, Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Omi International Art Center, Sun Valley Art Center, Weatherspoon Art Museum and more. Her work is held in the collections of The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Davis Museum, Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, Progressive Corporation, West Collection and the Zabludowicz Collection. She studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from Tufts University. Among her many awards and fellowships are residencies at MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Smack Mellon, Ucross Foundation, Art Omi, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, plus a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant.
