LESLIE WAYNE | HERE AND THERE
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 Waynes 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."
