Lorna Bieber: Of Echoes and Grace
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley
30 August – 17 December 2013
This exhibition debuts three large-scale multi-paneled montages by New York artist Lorna Bieber. These are installed alongside several of her earlier photographic murals. The montages form a series that has consumed the artist’s attention for the past four years—exploring the spiritually evocative potential of imagery associated with traditional religious themes in the context of contemporary art. Included are "Baby Jesus: Flight Into Egypt", 2009-10, "Judgment/Exile", 2011-12, and the magisterial 26-foot-long "Eden", 2012-13. The murals are selected from two series—one focused on trees and the other on birds—that now, with hindsight, seem to prepare the way for the new montages. Together, the artworks in Lorna Bieber: Of Echoes and Grace demonstrate the artist’s arrival at the zenith of an artistic quest that began decades ago.
Lorna Bieber worked for many years as a photo editor at leading New York magazines. Though trained as a painter, she became transfixed by the power and effect of reworked photographic imagery. Before the advent of computer programs that streamline this process, Lorna Bieber mastered the use of a copy machine as her medium—a technique that she continues to use today. She reproduces, expands, crops, and alters images from books and magazines until they are just recognizable. These are then joined to form new compositions that evoke themes far beyond the subjects of the source material.
MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE ART MUSEUM
50 College Street, South Hadley, Massachusetts 01075
mtholyoke.edu/artmuseum
