Edging

Gallery MC, Manhattan is pleased to present Irish artist, Lisa McCleary’s first solo exhibition in New York City, entitled Edging.

Exhibition Dates: Monday April 29th – Friday May 3rd.
Drinks reception: Thursday May 2nd 6-9pm.

Lisa McCleary, currently in residence at Vermont Studio Center, is showcasing a new series of work at Gallery MC, Manhattan. The exhibition will classify an exploration into the last year of her material practice, delving into elements of painting, sculpture and tapestry.

Addressing haptic sensations, McCleary’s practice is anchored by the embodiment of touch. Gallery MC, on the 8th floor of 549 West 52nd Street, will receive part of a growing collection of works in McCleary’s repertoire. The pieces, rendered on aluminum, focus on the pleasure of flesh, and the way that pleasure translates into our desire for our communication devices. With a keen eye for the mediation of corporeality, the depiction of real and abstraction, at turns, renders the body into an abject and sensuous landscape. McCleary filters this carnal depiction through a myriad of screens—queering the metaphorical body, and classifying an already detailed process through a progressive lens. Gallery MC will be transformed into a space in which desire, abjection and the digital are all at play.

Stemming from her long-standing investigation of painting as a form, McCleary deftly accesses deeply psychological states, whilst negotiating elements of desire, and notions surrounding the queer body. The erotic quality of the oozing landscapes, and wet folds of metaphorical flesh, suggest the sexual arousal of something ‘other’. Her work is an exploration of corporeal connection to flesh through the suggestion of visceral bodily landscapes that are both seductive and repulsive. The exhibition provides a synthesis of contemporary digital life and art historical traditions, creating a vivid future of alternative possibilities. Edging is McCleary’s first solo exhibition in New York.

“Lisa’s work has centered on the haptic screen as a surface of relation, desire, and mediation: a surface for not only technologically mediated pleasure, but also queer and feminist possibility. Her genius has been to use the traditional surfaces of painting as a medium through which to explore contemporary screen culture.”