States Of Being

Leslie Wayne

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Works (Tap to zoom)

Biography

Leslie Wayne (b. 1953 in Landstühl, Germany; lives and works in New York, NY) manipulates the medium of painting by approaching oil paint as a sculptural material, often scraping, folding, cutting, collaging and building up her surfaces. Her work takes on three-dimensional forms through layering and varying textures and colors. The tactile quality of her work has often evoked geology and the forces of nature by approaching her subject matter through visual manifestations of physical forces: compression, subduction and morphogenesis, rather than pictures of nature in the traditional sense. Many of her works are shaped in ways that accentuate movement and instability, challenging the traditional view of painting by creating three-dimensional stand-ins for the objects they represent.

Throughout her career, Wayne has explored portals and thresholds, depicted in the abstract or pictorial, while some of her more recent work uses trompe l'oeil and verisimilitude to challenge viewers’ own perceptions. In What's Inside, a series from 2017-2018, she depicts containers, windows and shaped panels in exaggerated and skewed perspectives, blurring the lines between the reality of the painting as an object and the illusion of the image they represent. This is particularly true for her larger scale paintings as one envisions stepping across thresholds into imagined interiors. Wayne's closets, which can be thought of as hiding spots from the outside world as much as spaces for safekeeping, and her broken and boarded up windows, are meditations on the state of our society and the environment. 

Exhibitions

Stressed World
The School, Jun 05 – Dec 03, 2022
Leslie Wayne: The Universe is on the Inside
May 20 – Jul 07, 2021
Leslie Wayne: What's Inside
20th Street, Feb 22 – Mar 30, 2019
Travelogue
The School, May 20 – Oct 06, 2018
Free Experience
Sep 07 – Oct 21, 2017
Status Quo
The School, Jan 31 – Apr 12, 2015
Mise En Scène
The School, Aug 01 – Dec 01, 2014
The Shape Of Things
20th Street, Jun 05 – Jul 25, 2014
Rags
Feb 20 – Mar 22, 2014
One Big Love
20th Street, May 27 – Jul 16, 2010
Trouble In Paradise
20th Street, Feb 09 – Mar 10, 2007
-poiesis
20th Street, Jun 29 – Jul 28, 2006