Lynn Aldrich: All Nature Sings

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WHEN: Jan. 5 – Feb. 2, 2008

HOURS: TUES. – SAT. 11-6 or by appointment

RECEPTION: Saturday, January 5, 2008 from 6-9 p.m.




All Nature Sings

Carl Berg Gallery is pleased to present Lynn Aldrich in a full gallery exhibition of two major sculptures and several new wall constructions. The exhibition title, All Nature Sings, is borrowed from an early American, Protestant hymn in celebration of the wonder and bounty of God's creation.

Inspired by scientific observation and its accompanying desire to know and understand, Aldrich proceeds to investigate the "material world" she inhabits - contemporary Los Angeles, breeding ground of the exotic and the ersatz. In these works, she expands her sculptural vocabulary to include both more extreme and more banal consumer products such as shiny steel rain spouts and gutter parts and a cornucopia of cleaning supplies and plumbing parts.
Starting Over (Neo-Atlantis) is a large, fantastical coral reef emerging from the gallery floor. Supported by an array of toilet plungers, it extends a floating shelf of "all things aquatic"-- sponges, brushes, mop heads, scrubbers and scouring pads in a display of consumer overload, biodiversity, and environmental concern.

Metaphors associated with water, or the lack of it, are addressed in works like Drench, a "stripe painting" of falling rain constructed of purchased, unique garden hoses and Quench, a long rain spout extending a curl of pipe and a squirt of clear, acrylic hose into the gallery space.
Designer's Choice (The Naming of the Animals) is an ongoing collection of fake fur and animal skin samples or fabric swatches, arranged in an evolutionary grid that can be "read" from lower forms like snakes to more advanced forms like plush-coated mammals. First displayed in 1997, here the piece is expanded to include many more "zoological specimens" the artist has discovered and preserved over the years. It includes exotic new species, peculiar anomalies, and odd-ball clones. All Nature Sings is a culmination of conceptual concerns and spiritual longing addressed through sculptural issues of form and space and with a growing freedom to indulge in painterly issues of surface and color.

Works by Lynn Aldrich have recently been acquired by the Calder Foundation in New York and by the Robert Chaney Collection in Houston. She will be giving a lecture on her art and spirituality at Cornell University in February 2008. In April, she has a one-person exhibition at Bethel College in St. Paul and in October, she is included in an exhibition at Art Center College of Design based on collaboration with the Spitzer telescope scientists at Cal Tech.

For further question please contact Carl Berg: Tel: 323-931-6060