Lauren Powell Presents:

~ Gracelee Lawrence ~

Rendered Touch

Relying equally on the digital and the physical, Gracelee Lawrence’s work deals with the relationship between food and flora, the body, and technology - often at an exaggerated scale. For each large sculptural output you see, there lies hundreds of hours of computer manipulations, traditionally not shared with the outside world. To create a sculpture, Gracelee grafts together body components (often scanned directly from her personal vessel) with other readily available free sourced objects, morphing them into something new. Eventually, components of these digital collages are 3D-printed, then expertly connected and meshed together by the artist’s own hand, resulting in visuals which always make one think and see differently. As the barriers between digital and physical spaces dissolve, our perception of reality has also shifted, and the compartmentalization encouraged in our online lives has led to a new world less concerned with the human touch. Though only ever half human, the emotions in her cyborgs are strong, and we are reminded of the changes and shifts we must make daily in order to survive this human life, to feel touched. For the first time, Graceelee is offering 2D prints of some of the preliminary designs for her 3D babies.

Learn more about Gracelee’s work here: https://www.graceleelawrence.com/ .

Gracelee Lawrence’s (Sanford, NC, b. 1989) work deals with relationships between food, the body, and technology. It is born in the transfigurative space between physical and digital reality, exploring the ways in which bodies are both gendered and metaphorically fragmented in terms of capitalist-driven material desires, physical sustenance, and the digital spaces we inhabit. Gracelee has attended twenty residencies in the US and abroad and opened her first solo show in New York at Thierry Goldberg in May 2019. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sculpture at University at Albany, SUNY. Recent exhibitions include Postmasters Gallery (New York, NY), Greenpoint Terminal Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), SPRING/BREAK Art Fair (New York, NY), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Los Angeles, CA), and The Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY). She has installed large-scale outdoor sculptures at Wave Hill (Bronx, NY), Museum of Museums (Seattle, WA), Franconia Sculpture Park (Shafer, MN), Mary Sky (Hancock, VT), and others. In 2017 she returned from 15 months as a Visiting Professor in the Multidisciplinary Department of Art at Chiang Mai University and assistant to artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook on a Luce Scholars Fellowship. She is a member of the collective MATERIAL GIRLS, a 2019 Jerome Fellow at Franconia Sculpture Park, a 2016-17 Luce Scholars Fellow, a recipient of the 2015 UMLAUF Prize, 2013 Eyes Got It Prize, and the 2011-12 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grant. Press for her work includes The New Yorker, ArtNet, Hyperallergic, Artspace, Beautiful/Decay, and MAAKE Magazine, among others. She is an enthusiastic dancer, a lifelong horsewoman, and an aspiring indoor gardener.