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Leigh Anne Lester: Vain Fictions of Our Own Devising
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Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present Leigh Anne Lester: Vain Fictions of Our Own Devising, a solo exhibition of works by Leigh Anne Lester, on view at our San Antonio gallery from September 18th to October 19th, 2024. An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, September 18th, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. There will be an artist talk and reception with Kelly Lyons, PhD, Professor of Biology at Trinity University, moderated by Greg Hazelton, PhD, Trinity University’s Director of Environmental Studies, on Saturday, October 5th, from 2:00 to 4:00 PM.
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Leigh Anne Lester
Blind Trajectory #2, 2020-2024The exhibition’s title references Sir Isaac Newton’s book, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which urges the reader not to attempt to transmute the patterns of nature, for it is only constant to itself. Blind Trajectory #2 references her original plant imagery and visual vocabulary while simultaneously serving as a specimen case of genetic modification and spotlights the elusiveness of controlling the natural order.
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Central to the Dismantled and Rebuilt series are paintings of natural debris: a tree stump, symbolizing longevity and endurance, and a leaf, representing ephemeral existence. These elements were discovered by the artist, Lester, amidst Berlin's resilient “rubble mountains.” The "rubble mountains" are non-natural hills, created in the 20 years following the Second World War by moving approximately 75 million m3 of debris from Berlin. The composition features layered blind-contour drawings, a technique that captures the raw, unfiltered essence of these natural forms, merging them with the historical context of their surroundings. The artwork's structure is a dynamic interplay between two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements. Emerging from the frame is a wooden sculpture that juts out, representing the physical intrusion of nature into the remnants of human conflict. This sculpture reinforces the theme of nature’s persistence and its ability to reclaim and redefine spaces marked by history.
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Regarding the artist, art critic David S. Rubin says the following, “Leigh Anne Lester is often thinking about the future. Long interested in how the natural world evolves and changes, she is scientifically inquisitive, and her fascinations range from the microscopic to the macroscopic.”
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Leigh Anne Lester
Proclamation of Nature, 2024Proclamation of Nature is based on sentence diagrams from old grammar lessons; the connected frames house watercolor distortions of Lester’s previous plant imagery, physically attaching themselves to other works with wooden bridges. The resulting family tree creates “branches,” sprouting the connecting “sentence bridges.” On those branches, draping like Spanish moss obscures the underlying information, including cut-out painted blind-contour drawing sculptures of some visual vocabulary within the frames. The linework of the frames creates a path for the eyes to follow and file through the artist’s visual vocabulary.
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Leigh Anne LesterAdjacent Impression 1.4, 2024Hand cut drafting film, color pencils, graphite, acrylic paint, plexiglass, wood, shadow84 x 48 x 5 in
213.4 x 121.9 x 12.7 cm
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Transformation Proclamation was the first piece Lester created for Vain Fictions of Our Own Devising. Based on three original drawings of three plants, Lester references the works in blind-contour drawings and digitally manipulates them through stretching and morphing, reflecting the process of genetic modification. Transformation Proclamation is the starting point for the visual vocabulary of the exhibition: blind-contours and negative spaces are repeated throughout the pieces in the show.
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“Her processes, commanded by a hand sure with blade and pencil, mime those of bio-engineering –--copying, splicing, combining, a sort of parallel bricolage of descent down a rabbit hole of one thing leading to another, each new fusion absorbing its precedents while simultaneously obscuring them in an advance of stacked images, transparencies, and modifications.” - Hills Snyer in his essay about Lester, "At Play in the Fields of the Chthulucene"
Leigh Anne Lester: Vain Fictions of our Own Devising: San Antonio
Past viewing_room
