Ceysson & Bénétière

Born in 1980, in Dover, USA.

Lives and works in New York, USA.

   Education

2010    MFA, Bard College, New York : Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts

2001    BFA, Pennsylvania State University

2000    Edwin Zoller Scholarship for Artistic Achievement

             Study Abroad in Ireland

   Presentation

Reviewing the way that Luloff has explored domesticity - arguably her portfolio's seminal concept - provides useful insight into the way that she commands in tandem the various aspects of her practice. The regularly occurring motif fascinates the patient artist, and she has spent years surveying its contours. During our lively conversation in her rather dreamy Bushwick studio, Luloff says, "the idea of the domestic has always been important, has always been a huge focus for me... the idea of a peaceful home or a disturbed home... I feel like, in one way or another, I make a lot of home environments." In its fundamental-most, literal-most iteration, domesticity is imbued into Luloff's practice by way of the swaths of used bed sheets included in every piece; they conjure for the audience thoughts of sensation, of sex and skin and comfort, and, perhaps most significantly to Luloff, life lived. Also, she uses bleach to draw the pictures of flora or men or teapots into those sheets, that act conjuring thoughts of home cleaning and scents, and maybe more broadly, home organisation.

- Kendra Jane Patrick

   Awards

2017    Arts and Architecture Alumni Award Recipient, Pennsylvania State University

2016    Bau at Camargo Arts Residency Award: Cassis, France, The Bau Institute

2015    Visiting professor at Tyler School of the Arts, Temple University

2012    Joan Mitchell Teaching Artist Award

2009    Yearly merit scholarships, Milton Avery School for the Arts, Bard College

2001    Edwin Zoller Scholarship, Pennsylvania State University

Lauren Luloff's recent collage paintings bring to mind the sky, the worn floor of a textile mill, tea in an old porcelain cup and laundry drying in the sun. Her process is simple: first she stretches semi transparent fabric over stretcher bars, then glues swatches of fabrics and paints on this "ground". Nothing is hidden and everything is revealed. The process, laid bare, yields something mysterious; the work becomes hazy and atmospheric, like dawn or a memory of childhood. The fabrics simultaneously root and dislocate the painted colors, like Matisse who famously always painted with scraps of printed fabrics hanging around his studio.

Or perhaps they are a little like Rauschenberg's "Bed", the piece where he took his bedclothes and tipped them from horizontal to vertical, and magically the most basic and homely thing became art. Similarly, Luloff recycles and pays homage to her life and practice. A life lived just as much in the studio as in the outside world. The pieces of fabric here are, in fact, doubly recycled. Luloff scours thrift shops to find the "right" piece of bed sheet or old curtain. Back in her studio she will bleach or stain patterns and shapes into the fabric which, in turn, are glued onto her "paintings" both large scale and small. The pieces here, on these intimately scaled paintings, are the lowest common denominator, the tender pieces, saved from the dustpan after a day of work; like flakes of gold in a prospector's pan.

The works on display are glimpses into a life unfolding through painting and material. Luloff's work belongs in the lineage of such artists as the before mentioned Rauschenberg, as well as Joan Snyder, American heirs to cubism and artists known for wearing their hearts on their sleeves. There is also atmosphere in these paintings, not unlike painters and notable colorists Helen Frankenthaler or Mark Rothko. Luloff offers a constant contrast between the rooted objects of everyday life and the soaring ambition to transcend those very things.

I have had this same experience when I visit Luloff's funkily majestic Bushwick studio. The space she has created for her herself and her work is endlessly heartening to me as a painter. The capacity for this artist to make things with fabric, glue, and scissors and paint that are so uniquely her own, full of necessity, generosity and grace. This, suddenly I realize, maybe the very definition of painting and quite possibly love.

Wallace Whitney

For as long as she can remember, Lauren Luloff has been trying to make a good, beautiful painting, and by many accounts she has succeeded. New York Times reviewer Roberta Smith reported being "knocked out" by a recent one at her Show Room show earlier this year; upon learning that I recently sat down with Luloff, Gallerist Editor Andrew Russeth remarked that she was "fantastic... a real artist" he called her. In large part, the praise for Luloff's work focuses on the paintings' idiosyncratic beauty; her quirky materials, put together thoughtfully and carefully, combine into art work full of subtle yet unflinching intricacies that expose Luloff as an adept craftsman. On this, the occasion of her second solo outing with Halsey McKay, I'd like to broaden the critical discussion of Luloff's work to include an analysis of the design and operation of her practice. Previously, critics have analyzed its various attributes and the outcomes it yields in such painstaking detail, that I think, at this juncture, a valuable critical contribution should be an examination of the aggregate of Luloff's creative choices

Reviewing the way that Luloff has explored domesticity - arguably her portfolio's seminal concept - provides useful insight into the way that she commands in tandem the various aspects of her practice. The regularly occurring motif fascinates the patient artist, and she has spent years surveying its contours. During our lively conversation in her rather dreamy Bushwick studio, Luloff says, "the idea of the domestic has always been important, has always been a huge focus for me... the idea of a peaceful home or a disturbed home... I feel like, in one way or another, I make a lot of home environments." In its fundamental-most, literal-most iteration, domesticity is imbued into Luloff's practice by way of the swaths of used bed sheets included in every piece; they conjure for the audience thoughts of sensation, of sex and skin and comfort, and, perhaps most significantly to Luloff, life lived. Also, she uses bleach to draw the pictures of flora or men or teapots into those sheets, that act conjuring thoughts of home cleaning and scents, and maybe more broadly, home organization.

Her work also indicates that she understands the idea as a multidimensional one, and casually yet decisively explores its varying moods. Taking it into its more folkloric dimensions, for example, she spent months living in India learning the ancient technique of block printing. This not only resulted in the incorporation of the practice into her work (significant because pattern has always functioned as both a visual outcome and an operational device, here) but also, in subtle patches of Islamic-patterned cloth showing up in recent pieces. Morphing into nostalgia, domesticity looks like the sailboats bleached into current works, reminiscent of the New England summers of her childhood. And, in its most sober and practical manifestation, the concept looked like the exploration of intense relationship dynamics, present throughout her moody, heavily colored 2013 work. It is the patient, careful employ of material and skill around the concept that allows her to so thoroughly saturate work with the idea without the results feeling heavy handed. Luloff's craftsmanship then, extends beyond the ability to put together something well, and into one wherein she demonstrates time and again after show and another the ability to exhaust an idea without exhausting her audience.

Still, what might be most appealing about Luloff's fascination with the subject is her apparent genuine intrigue. Even the attention fixated on her process and materials seem to acknowledge this fact. Consensus of opinion on her use of bed sheets, for example, seems to be that they are unique without feeling gaudy or contrived. And it is that fact - that they are genuinely odd - that leads me to think that earnestness might be an essential part of her practice. I do not bring this up to sentimentalize any part of what Luloff does; unbridled, wear-it-on-your-chest passion is a notable quality in an art market saturated with ironic "joke" paintings, or absences of depth and authenticity masquerading as dedication to formalism. Luloff, conversely, has been working with bed sheets for fifteen years now; with bleach for four. This long standing commitment to mastering her materials pushes the work toward truth in a way that only earnest devotion can.

A dedicated practitioner of art, Lauren Luloff makes work by means of an exceptionally dynamic practice. Those wispy, delicate, fantastical paintings with their determined painterly directives and goals are well deserving of their consistent commendation.

Kendra Jayne Patrick

Solo shows at Ceysson Gallery
Lauren Luloff, Saint-Etienne
November 05, 2020 - January 16, 2021

Lauren Luloff, Paris
February 07 - March 16, 2019

Lauren Luloff, New York
September 20 - November 04, 2017

Lauren Luloff, Genève
March 17 - May 14, 2016

Lauren Luloff, Luxembourg
November 22, 2014 - January 14, 2015


Group shows at Ceysson Gallery
The Spaces In Between, New York
September 09 - November 07, 2020

Spring Saint-Étienne, Saint-Etienne
June 12 - July 25, 2020

10 YEARS in Luxembourg, Wandhaff
June 02 - August 04, 2018

FEED THE METER, Wandhaff
September 26, 2015 - January 30, 2016

Special Guest New York, Offsite
September 08 - September 28, 2015

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Solo shows

2019
Small Landscapes, Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY, USA
Reflections and Other Stories, Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris, France

2017
Sun Drawn, Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, USA
The Evergreens, Ceysson & Bénétière, New York, USA

2016
New Growth, Bernard Ceysson Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland

2015
Water Vessels, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, USA
Lauren Luloff, Annarumma, Naples, Italy

2014
Heliotrope, Halsey Mckay Gallery, New York, USA
Pineapples and Teapots, The Hole, New York, USA
Lauren Luloff, Bernard Ceysson Gallery, Luxembourg

2013
Daily Companions, Cooper-Cole Gallery, Toronto, Canada
Recent Paintings, Showroom Gowanus, New York, USA

2012
Dark Interiors and Bright Landscapes, Halsey McKay, New York, USA
Recent Small Works, Horton Gallery, New York, USA
HERE, BUOY Gallery, Kittery, ME, USA

2011
Wind, Beach and Still Life, End of the Century, New York, USA

2010
A Dinosaur with Window into the Future and into the Past, site-specific installation, BUOY, Kittery, USA
WOVEN, site-specific installation, Secret Project Robot, New York, USA

2009
From the Sheets, Sunday L.E.S., New York, USA

2007
Yard Sail, outdoor, site-specific installation, Black and White Gallery, New York, USA

2006
Believe. Make, site-specific installation, Secret Project Robot, New York, USA

2005
Recent Paintings, Black and White Gallery, New York, USA
Recent Paintings, Sideshow Gallery, New York, USA
Forist, site-specific installation, Happy Ending, New York, USA
Love Girl, Cinders, New York, USA

2004
Recent Paintings, no Gallery, New York, USA

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Group shows

2020
Printemps , Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière, Saint-Étienne, France

2019
Clare Grill, Lauren Luloff, Kathia St. Hillaire, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, USA
The Sun Came in like Butterscotch, Project Pangee, Montreal, Canada
Notebook, 56 Henry, New York, USA
Walking Dream, Freight and Volume, New York, USA
Yellow, September Gallery, Hudson, NY, USA

2018
Glade Hits, Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, USA
10 Ans à Luxembourg, Ceysson & Benetiere, Wandhaff, Luxembourg

2017
Flat Fix, Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, USA

2016
Imagine, Brand New Gallery, New York, USA

2015
Eagles II, Marlborough Gallery, Madrid, Spain
Special Guest Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Zurcher Gallery, New York, USA
Feed the Meter, Bernard Ceysson Gallery, Luxembourg
Currents: Recent art from East Tennessee and Beyond, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN, USA

2014
Redacted, Islip Art Museum, New York, USA
Ain'tings, Robert Blumenthal Gallery, New York, USA
Material Images, Johannes Vogt Gallery, New York, USA
Space Heater, Harbor Gallery, New York, USA
Ghost Current, curated by Ryan Wallace, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark

2013
Seeing with Fingers, curated by Laurel Sparks, The Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, New York, USA
Summer in Ceylon, Showroom, New York, USA
Summer Session, Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, USA
Lauren Luloff and Georgia Dickie, Cooper Cole Gallery, NADA Art Fair, New York, USA
Dallas Art Fair, Halsey McKay Gallery, Dallas, USA
Gesturing into Consciousness: Juried Alumni Exhibition, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Donut Muffin, curated by Tamara Gonzalez and Jessica Duffet, Dorsky Gallery, New York, USA
Swamp, curated by Kari Adelaide, Edgar Allen Poe Center, New York, USA

2012
Miami Project, Halsey McKay Gallery, Miami, USA
Stretching Painting, curated by Veronica Roberts, Lelong Gallery, New York, USA
That This is, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, USA
Hot white flesh ties, Favorite Goods, Los Angeles, USA
Dirty, Messy Painting, Roos Arts, Rosendale, New York, USA
Lobsterama, curated by Nathan Gwynne, Shoot the Lobster, New York, USA
Special Blend, curated by Chris Matin, The Journal, New York, USA
Wavers, curated by EJ Hauser and Rob Nadeau, New York, USA

2011
Painting Expanded, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, USA
Not the Way you Remembered, The Queens Museum, New York, USA
Issue Project Room, Benefit Art Auction, New York, USA
Snowclones, Art Blog Art Blog, New York, USA
The Working Title, Bronx River Art Center, New York, USA
Painting, Design, Speculation, Generosity, CB 1 Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
Summer Above, curated by Wallace Whitney, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, PA Control, Alt., Delete, HKJB, New York, USA

2010
Material Issue and Other Matters, CANADA Gallery, New York, USA
First Matter, curated by Lindsay Aveilhe, By Appointment or By Chance, New York, USA
The World's Greatest, Daily Operation, New York, USA
Domestic City, Kid Yellin, New York, USA
Yielding California, Triple Base Pop-Up Space, New York, USA
Thingy, Occasional Projects, New York, USA

2009
Oculus Imaginationis, Horton and Co., New York, USA
Bard MFA Thesis Exhibition, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA
Warren Oates in the Economic Crisis of 2008, Okay Mountain, Austin, USA
It's a Wonderfull Life, Sideshow Gallery, New York, USA

2008
Material Differences, Amy Simon Fine Art, Westport, USA
There is no there, there, Rivington Arms, New York, USA
Admirer, 31 Grand, New York, USA

2007
Paula DeLuccia/ Lauren Luloff, Sideshow Gallery, New York, USA
Frequencies, Black and White Gallery, New York, USA

2006
Brooklyn, Westport Art Center, Westport, USA
Mirror of our Obsessions and Fears, Black and White Gallery, New York, USA

2005
I Find You, Cinders, New York, USA

2019
Sarah MOROZ, “Lauren Luloff: Reflections and other Stories,” Flash Art Magazine

2017
“Lauren Luloff,” Monograph published by Ceysson editions d’Art, principal text by Wallace Whitney
Eileen Jeng Lynch, “Lauren Luloff: Drawing (with bleach) from Life,” Two Coats of Paint
“Graveyard Genesis: Lauren Luloff at Ceysson & Benetiere, NY,” BLOUIN ARTINFO
“Portfolio: Lauren Luloff on Creating Paintings without Canvas, Primer and Paint,” Pat Rogers, Hamptons Art Hub

2015
"Solo exhibition by New York artist Lauren Luloff opens at Marlborough Chelseah", in artdaily.org, 2015

2014
Kendra Jayne PATRICK, "Lauren Luloff", in On Verge. Alternative art criticism, August 20th 2014
Marc GUIDUCCI, "Lauren Luloff at Halsey McKay Gallery", in Vogue, July 11th 2014
Roberta SMITH, "Lauren Luloff: 'Recent Paintings'", in The New York Times, 2014

2012
Roberta SMITH, "Like Watching Paint Thrive: In Five Chelsea Galleries, the State of Painting", in The
New York Times, 2012
Kari ADELAIDE, "Lauren Luloff's Recent Small Works at Horton Gallery", in Huffington Post, 2012
Rick BRIGGS, "Nothing is Hidden and Everything is Revealed", in Hyperallergic, 2012
Tracey HARNISH, "Bedsheets and Body Movements", in Huffington Post, 2012
Andrew RUSSETH, "10 Things to Do in New York's Art World before March 5", in Gallerist NY, 2012
Robert SHUSTER, "Best in Show: Oded Hirsch at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, Plus: Lauren Luloff and Francesca, 2012
Woodman", in Village Voice, 2012
"The Lookout: A Weekly Guide to Shows You Won't Want to Miss", in Art in America, 2012
Jason STOPA and Joshua ABELOW, "30 Artists To Watch in 2012: Part II", in NY ARTS Magazine, 2012

2011
Johnny MISHEFF, *Visiting Artists / Lauren Luloff", in T Magazine, 2011
Andrew RUSSETH, "16 Miles of String", 2011
"Abstract Painting, the New Casualists", Sharon Butler, The Brooklyn Rail, 2011

2010
Chloe JOHNSON, "Fitted Sheets", in Wire, 2010
"Lauren Luloff Progress Report", 2010

2009
"Canvasing the Neighborhood at Sunday, Jen Bekman, Janos Gat, and Beyond", 2009
Martha SCHWENDENER, "In which we lace up our art shoes and troll the Lower East Side", in Village Voice, 2009
WFMU's Beware of the Blog, "Lauren Luloff's Mountainous Bed Sheets", 2009

2007
SEASONS // OUTDOOR SPACE // WILLIAMSBURG, Black and White Project Space, 2002-2007
Rodney DICKSON,"Lauren Luloff", in NY Arts Magazine, 2007