Lara Saget
re-union

March 5 to April 19, 2023

Opening Reception: Sunday March 5 from 3 to 5pm

My work makes materially visible the limitations of logic.
My practice is fueled by the belief that facts are not absolute.
The deeper the digging, the more exponential reality becomes.

Stone.

I start with stone. The stone ranges from Black Marble found in India to Tuckahoe Marble found in New York. Tuckahoe marble is the marble that was used to build the Washington Memorial Arc, Borough Hall, New York’s Federal Hall, the Washington Memorial Arch in Washington Square, Manhattan’s historic Marble Cemetery, and more. This historic marble has gone extinct. I found the last remains in a former quarry turned Marriott Suites construction site in Tuckahoe, New York.

I trap stone in glass and bronze. Logically, the heat of the stone cracks the glass and the heat of the bronze cracks the stone. However, I have found that this is not always the case. When heated to the same degree, the materials cohabitate. The separation between them is circumstantial and temporary.

Tree.

The oldest tree in New York City is an elm tree on the northwest corner of Washington Square Park. The Hangman’s Elm is rumored to be over 300 years old.

With an iron ladle, I take molten glass from the furnace and pour it on a fallen branch. The glass turns the branch to ash, paralyzing its remains, and assuming its form.

Maybe trees speak a language that humans have gone deaf to.

I cast the weeping wound, the dripping crack of Hangman’s Elm in glass.

There may be no answers, nothing concrete to hold onto.

But there are patterns; my charge is to distill the patterns in order to reveal new archetypes and, in doing so, crystallize the transience of certainty.

I think of my materials as long lost friends that get to meet again.

Drawings

The drawings were created during peak Covid. Since I started making sculpture at around 18 years old, I pushed painting and drawing away. I was scared of drawing. The page felt too precious, and I couldn’t be honest with it. During the pandemic, my studio was too far from my apartment. I was living in Chelsea and my studio was in Gowanus. I had no means of making sculpture.

I started painting my furniture, my rug, my couch, the walls. Everything and nothing started feeling like a canvas. This process cracked me open.

This work became a Reunion with myself.

Artist Bio

Lara Saget (born in 1989) lives and works in New York, NY. She received her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University and her MFA in Fine Arts from New York University. Her work has been exhibited in the US and abroad in varied spaces including Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, Texas; Gallery of the Faculty of Arts, Pristina, Kosovo; Art Ichol, Maihar, India; Fortnight Institute, New York, NY; 80 Washington Square East Gallery, New York, New York; Studio 106, Los Angeles, California; THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space, Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello, Venice, Italy; Wells Studio, Paris, France; Peninsula Art Space, Brooklyn, New York; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, New York; Art Helix, Brooklyn, New York, and more. Residencies include Yucca Valley Material Lab, Yucca Valley, CA; Iris Projects, Venice, CA; Art Ichol Bronze Casting and Stone Carving Residency, Maihar, India; and CCA with Grzegorz Kowalski and Artur Żmijewski, Warsaw, Poland. She has received grants and awards including the 2022 Tg: Transitions in Kiln-Glass Emerging Artist Award, 2017 New York University MFA Artistic Practice Award, the 2016 Steinhardt Scholarship Award, and the 2017/18 Urban Glass Scholarship Award.

Public projects include Public Sculpture for NYC Parks, Clumber Corner, Brooklyn, NY; Public Sculpture, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY; Art Ichol, Maihar, India; Native Woodland Garden Public Art Project, Schwartz Plaza, Washington Square Park, New York, NY; Collaborative Concepts, Saunders Farm, Garrison, NY; Collaborative Concepts, Tilly Foster Farm, Putnam County, NY, and public sculpture for NYC Parks Clumber Corner, Brooklyn, NY. Lara co-founded Studio 200, an art exhibition collective in which shows curated coincide thematically with workshops, lectures, and installations of various media.