Loren Erdrich
Bodies merge with their environments through immersion, reflection, camouflage, and decay. At times the flesh itself becomes a landscape in its fragility, mutability and resilience.
Water takes a primary material role in Loren's process - raw pigments and dyes are applied unbound, mixed solely with water, to canvas and muslin. Forms simultaneously emerge and dissolve as water erodes the rigidity of the medium and ground. Loren savors the push/pull between deliberate and unintentional movements. Her relationship to and physical use of water informs Loren's content: water gives rise to a world that celebrates fluidity. Porous boundaries are usually at odds with a society dependent on clearly defined borders to maintain order. Bodies that menstruate, give birth, are penetrated and suffer metamorphoses have long been portrayed as monstrous.
Instead, Loren's work conjures a world in which softness and vulnerability are celebrated instead of shamed. Bodies merge with their environments through immersion, reflection, camouflage, and decay. At times the flesh itself becomes a landscape in its fragility, mutability and resilience. Loren reconsiders porousness and malleability as forces of strength and connection. Loren leans towards moments which dissolve the separation between outside and inside, me and you, this world and the other-worldly. Ultimately each piece comfortably resides on the threshold of existence and extinction.
Loren Erdrich has been awarded residencies at the Jentel Foundation, Burren College of Art, Santa Fe Art Institute, thrice at Art Farm Nebraska, Sculpture Space and the Vermont Studio Center. Notable accomplishments include publication in ARTMAZE Mag and exhibitions with Harper’s, The Untitled Space, Proto Gomez and Field Projects in New York, Wasserman Projects in Detroit and Anima Mundi in the UK. Erdrich frequently collaborates with the poet Sierra Nelson, coauthoring the award winning I Take Back the Sponge Cake (published by Rose Metal Press) and Isolation (limited edition, 2020). She holds a MFA from the Burren College of Art at the National University of Ireland, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. Erdrich lives and works in New York, NY.
