NEW YORK, NY.- Adrianne Lobel: Paintings and Tapestries opens at 72 Warren Street Gallery on March 22, 2022, where it will be on view until April 17, 2022. This exhibition coincides with the opening of Mark Morris’ L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), for which Lobel designed the set.
Adrianne Lobel is a multidisciplinary American artist with an extensive career in stage design for ballet, opera, and theater, on and off Broadway, in major regional theaters, and in Europe. She has also been painting for over two decades. This exhibition brings together twelve paintings and twelve tapestries created over the last year in a secluded stone house in Rhinebeck, NY. Surrounded by fields and woods, Lobel works outdoors, creating small plein air paintings that become the basis for larger canvases made in her studio in Hoboken. The tapestries are, in turn, based on the paintings, where the very nature of needlepoint means that the images become more abstracted. Shown side-by-side, these images speak to Lobel’s obsession with the translation of nature.
The paintings and tapestries in this exhibition have much in common with Lobel’s three-dimensional theatrical designs, utilizing bold volumes, intense colors, and a decisive attention to line and geometry. This body of work is inspired by artists such as Sonia Delauney, Henri Matisse, Isamu Noguchi, and Sophie Tauber Arp, as well as music, notably the Baroque. Lobel also channels her work with choreographers, notably Mark Morris, through whom she has learned to complete a gesture and take a shape to its ultimate finish.
Adrianne Lobel: Paintings and Tapestries coincides with the opening of Mark Morris’ L’Allegro at BAM, which features the scenic design Lobel created in 1989 for Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. The set has traveled the world for over thirty years and this is its third iteration at BAM. Inspired by Rothko and Albers, a series of scrims and translucent drops serve as abstract representations of changing landscapes - sky, trees, sea, meadows, night. Moving at different times and speeds, these coordinate with the music and choreography, amplifying the emotions evoked by the dance. The keen comprehension of color, line and movement embodied by this design is a constant presence throughout Lobel’s creative practice.
Adrianne Lobel is a multidisciplinary American artist and stage and scenic designer. She has worked on opera, ballet, and musical productions around the world, including with Donald Byrd, Eliot Feld, Mark Morris, Peter Sellars, Christopher Wheeldon, and Francesca Zambello. Lobel has received numerous accolades for her designs, winning awards such as the Lucille Lortel, the Obie, the Lucille Lortel, the Jefferson, and the Long Wharf's prestigious Murphy Award. A graduate of the New York Studio School, Lobel is also a practicing artist, with solo exhibitions in New York galleries including Carter Burden Gallery, Bowery Gallery and Walter Wickiser Gallery, and also upstate at the Atwater Gallery, Sharada Gallery, Marianne Corville Gallery and The Mabbitsville Gallery. Lobel has also participated in group exhibitions, such as at the Julia Saul Gallery, curated by Isaac Mizrahi.
