Leslie Wayne
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Works
Leslie Wayne
Here and There, 2020Hand-Painted, Mixed-Media Sculpture
(Wood, enamel, acrylic, digital photograph, glass, screenprint, and brass)72 x 72 x 1 1/2 inches
(182.9 x 182.9 x 3.8 cm)Further images
Leslie Wayne and Durham Press have released the sculpture titled Here and There depicting a life-sized cabinet constructed of mixed media including wood, enamel, brass, and screenprint. This work acts...Leslie Wayne and Durham Press have released the sculpture titled Here and There depicting a life-sized cabinet constructed of mixed media including wood, enamel, brass, and screenprint. This work acts as an extension of Wayne’s current body of work which often explores motifs of broken windows, containers, and cabinets. Wayne's practice is highly dimensional, scraping and peeling paint to construct a piece in an almost sculptural way. In Here and There, these same motifs are applied to a more traditional sculpture format while also remaining true to her practice of using paint as material.
The trompe-l'oeil that so often appears in Wayne's work pushes Here and There further into three-dimensional space. Though under two inches thick, the cabinet appears as if it could truly hold the books that sit on its shelves. Wayne explains that she imagines her cabinets to be "seen from the point of view of a small child looking into a forbidden space or to an unreachable ledge" - the perspective becomes warped from their angle, skewed in a way that appears not quite right.
Wayne describes the cabinet as looking "both outward to the world and inward to my own life." Though a cabinet can act as a place of safekeeping, a hiding spot from the world, it can also bear witness to your life or act as a mirror to yourself - opening the cabinet doors also opens the doors to yourself. Even inside the cabinet you are still apart of the larger world, as suggested by the galaxy within the walls. Your books, your music, your paints, are still surrounded by the world around you, a sentiment Wayne sums up in the phrase "the personal is political."Viewing rooms
BiographyB. 1953, Landstuhl, Germany
Leslie Wayne was born in Germany and grew up in Los Angeles. Following two years at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a year in Paris and five years in Israel, she moved to New York in 1982 and transferred to Parsons School of Design where she earned her BFA in Sculpture with Honors. Largely informed by her identification with the light, colors and tactile sensibilities of the West Coast, Wayne’s work intersects painting, sculpture, abstraction, and representation to create a direct and intimate experience of the world around her. Wayne has exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad and has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2018, 2006), the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2017), the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2012), the Buhl Foundation (2004), the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation (1994), and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1985).
Wayne has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 1989 and lives and works in New York City.