NEW YORK, NY.- Marlborough Gallery announces the exhibition, Recent Works by L.C. Armstrong, which opened on Tuesday, September 16th and will continue through October 18th, 2014. Comprised of nine vibrant, acrylic paintings, the exhibition features Armstrong’s signature aesthetic of maximalist landscape and flower paintings. Remaining true to the leitmotif of the flower and symbolic emblems such as the bomb fuse, Armstrong creates works that explore the dark edge of paradise.
The thirteen paintings showcased in this exhibition unveil the artist’s new acrylic technique that accomplishes a distinctive glow, a departure from her signature polished resin finish. Armstrong’s meticulous layering of acrylic enhances the luminosity of the work from the very foundation of the medium.
The exhibition includes four small paintings depicting exotic flora with bomb fuses as stems. Recalling the still-lifes of Dutch masters such as Otto van Schriek, Rachel Ruysch and Jan van Huysum, these works materialize Armstrong’s exploration of alluring, transient and fragile beauty – a blatant depiction, and a warning, of temporality.
Also featured in this exhibition is the diptych, Blossoms Over Bow Bridge, a soft and ethereal landscape of Central Park, a recurrent setting in the work of Armstrong. The serene and harmonious composition of nature provides a contrast to the looming, man-made structures seen in the background, the space beyond the park. The artist creates an artificial landscape within this “walled paradise,” where the natural world becomes the subject of Armstrong’s escapist vision.
Adopting this lush and ephemeral subject matter, Armstrong copes with the relation between beauty and materialism, –the transient nature of earthly goods and pursuits. Continuing the discourse of still-life painting, these emotive and spectral portrayals render everyday life through the artist’s sense of fantasy and wonder.
Born in Humbolt, Tennessee, Armstrong completed two degrees from Pasadena’s Art College Center of Design and San Francisco’s Art Institute, while customizing vans, motorcycles, airplanes and hot rod cars, perfecting her technique and supporting herself through school. In 1991, Armstrong was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and in that same year her work was included in The Corcoran Biennial. After her first solo show in Cologne, Germany in 1991, Armstrong exhibited at White Columns in 1992 and over the next fifteen years with galleries in New York, Washington, Frankfurt and Paris.
Armstrong’s work has been included in a number of significant permanent collections such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Harvard University, Cambridge; The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, among others.
