March 26, 2019 / Last updated : May 29, 2019 Gorazd Poposki Artist

Lisa McCleary: Edging

Gallery MC, Manhattan is pleased to present Irish-Australian 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. Edgingis 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.”

BIO:

Lisa McCleary, b.1992, is an Irish-Australian artist currently living in New York. In 2015 she received her BFA Honours Degree from UNSW Art & Design Sydney, and in 2018 completed her Master of Fine Arts Degree at Parsons, The New School, NYC. She has exhibited internationally with an upcoming solo show at Gallery MC, NYC and previous solo exhibitions Opened 1m Ago and #foreveralone at Palmer Art Projects, Sydney in 2015 and 2016. McCleary showcased her work in several group exhibitions in 2017, including: Wait….What? Yes.,The Great Acceleration, Between, Unsentimental, and Recoded: Strategies of Queer Abstraction. In 2018 she was chosen as a winner of the RE: ARTISTE, Show Your World, International Juried Art Competitionat Gallery MC, NYC. McCleary’s work has been showcased in several exhibitions in 2018, including: Art on 52^ndSt., Growing Pebbles, The Seattle Erotic Arts Festival, Body Positive, Figurative Group Show and From Minuscule to Monumental at The Factory LIC, New York. In 2019, McCleary’s work will be included in exhibitions such as: Saturated: An Eye For Color, NYC, ANIRAM (94-17), BK, SMUT, NYC, The Seattle Erotic Arts Festival, WA and Representational Realism, OH. In 2018 she attended the Summer Painting Residency Program at Con Artist Collective and was a fellow of the Art & Law Program lead by attorney Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento at Cornell University, NYC. McCleary has been selected as a finalist for the William and Dorothy Yeck Award at Miami University 2019. She is currently undertaking the Trestle Artist Residency in Brooklyn and will attend the Vermont Studio Residency in 2019 for which she received the VSC Merit Grant.