NEW YORK, NY.- The Jewish Museum is presenting the first museum exhibition in the United States of work by Vivian Suter (b. 1949, Argentina) from May 5 through October 22, 2017. This project is part of the series Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings, which brings contemporary art to the Museum's Skirball Lobby. The work on view mimics the simple, rack-like structures Suter builds to dry, store, stretch, and un-stretch her paintings, bringing an echo of her improvisatory style to New York.

Vivian Suter was born in Buenos Aires, where her family fled Vienna at the start of the Nazi invasion. Over the course of her 40-year career, she has lived all over the world; traveling throughout Latin America in 1983, she decided to settle in Guatemala while it was in the midst of a civil war. Her home and studios are in the village of Panajachel, sited on a former coffee plantation abundant with vegetation and surrounded by mountains, volcanoes, and Lake Atitlán.

Suter’s work embraces the unpredictability of her natural environment, and her paintings portray its wildness. Canvases are moved between the studio and the grounds outside and stained with rain and mud. Leaves and fruits from avocado and mango trees leave their shadowy traces, as well as those imposed by animals and extreme weather. None of her works are dated, rather, they visually archive a chaotic history.

Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings showcases newly commissioned, contemporary art in the Skirball Lobby of the Jewish Museum. The series builds on the Museum’s 1970 exhibition Using Walls, which featured commissioned works installed both within and beyond the Warburg Mansion, by artists such as Richard Artschwager, Sol LeWitt, Richard Tuttle, and others. Over 45 years later, the Museum revisits this moment in its history by showcasing new work by emerging artists from around the world. Since its launch in 2013, the series has featured artists including Claire Fontaine, Willem de Rooij, Chantal Joffe, Valeska Soares, Beatriz Milhazes, and Alex Israel.

The Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings series is organized by Kelly Taxter, Associate Curator, The Jewish Museum.

Vivian Suter has been exhibiting since 1973. In 2017 she will be included in Documenta 14, in Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany. Her recent exhibitions include a retrospective at Kunsthalle Basel, and inclusion in the 31st São Paulo Bienal, both in 2014, and Olinka, Where Movement is Created, at Museo Rufino Tamayo in 2013.