Pfizer Exhibit

The Essence of Nature’s Inspiration: Selected Works on Paper by Hilary Lorenz

Plants swaying and blooming before your eyes in the Elusive Garden series or flowing water in the work Spilling Current, constructed of meticulously crafted lines and dashes coupled with carefully selected color combine to produce an animated depiction of nature in Hilary Lorenz’s art.

Lorenz visually translates the physical and visceral experience of hiking remote landscapes. The works in this exhibition reflect the artist’s observations of nature and record, via mark-making, the direct physical experience of wilderness travel in remote landscapes such as New York’s Adirondacks and New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains. The drawings and prints are a visual mapping specific to each region: abstract, intuitive timelines that mark a spatial journey of memory and change.

Grounded in traditions of performance walking, Lorenz’s artwork is shaped by the space she passes through while hiking. These private pilgrimages through swiftly changing landscapes create collections of physical memory. Translated into tangible objects, these works become documents of changing weather, sounds of nature, isolation, and the singular experience of observing time through changes in the environment. Lorenz describes her artistic process as a singular version of cartography:

“The topographical nature of my work, both imagined and natural,
evolves from my subconscious as I shape and transform the
two-dimensional space with the memory of my own physical experiences
of how my body moves through space, whether it is the crowded streets
of Manhattan or the rigorous Southwestern mountain terrain. My
physical body holds the memory of the experience that I then decode in
my artwork to explore the notion of transience, chance, and difference.”

Eschewing many traditional painting techniques, Lorenz favors complex patterns composed of carefully drawn line, circles, dots and glyphs. With ink and gouache, the brush strokes are grouped to form larger topographical systems, which in turn act as maps charting the movement of lines and marks. In essence, each work becomes a multi-layered engrams of a complex and often poignant set of memories

The works in this exhibition are for sale; refer to the podium handout for the pricelist and contact information. For further information, visit http://www.hilarylorenz.com or contact Pfizer’s Corporate Art Program at 212-733-5083.

About The Artist

Born in the Midwest, Hilary Lorenz uses wilderness hiking to investigate the ritual and rhythm that test physical and psychic boundaries as the interplay for her works on paper. Lorenz received her MFA from the University of Iowa in printmaking and multimedia and has had numerous group and solo shows throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Asia. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from many organizations including the Fulbright Foundation and the Lower East Side Printshop in Manhattan. Lorenz created artwork and the design of textiles for Merce Cunningham’s costumes in Split Sides which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1993.

The artist just compled a six-week residency at the Provincetown C-Scape for Art where she lived isolated in a primitive beach shack on the Atlantic Ocean without water, electricity, or phone. Lorenz is now in Tasmania on a similar project to be completed August 1, 2008