Molly Rose Lieberman
Sunken Swimmer
January 24th - March 8th
Opening reception Friday, January 24th, 7-9pm
Gym presents Sunken Swimmer, a solo show of recent drawings and paintings from Molly Rose Lieberman. Sunken Swimmer is Lieberman's first solo exhibition in New York.
Featured in Journal
Molly Rose Lieberman (b. 1994 in Brooklyn, NY) is a painter and archivist. Previous shows include Midnight Run (2018), presented by Auto Body, at the Brooklyn Public Library in Williamsburg, Miragers (2019) at 6BC Community Garden on the Lower East Side, and Low Hanging Fruit at Noah Hall in Oberlin, Ohio (2016).
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Save everything – it may come in handy later¹
Little did she know that this was her job, too, saving everything: the letters, the documents, the slides, the images, the microfilm. Email correspondence can be paper, too.
They say that “2-D objects are easy”
“Why is that?”
“Because they don’t have form”
“Form?”
(I mean, even flat-earthers know that things happen on the surface. The problem: light curves, but what happens underneath?)
Molly Rose Lieberman translates the things you come and go to and hold onto for safekeeping. In drawings and paintings, she translates: snapshots to paintings, rugs to paintings (just as paintings have historically been translated into textiles – medieval, late 15th century).
This is a process of derivation, and of renewal – motifs travel. Lieberman’s edition of Hooked Rug Treasure is one such source of motifs – a red acanthus leaf, a California grotto, a grid of postcards – to be worked and reworked. Objects beget objects; drawings seek their honor; flip it over, there is probably something drawn on the back.
– Sophie Kovel
[1] John Cage and Sister Corita Kent. “10 Rules for Students and Teachers”
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sunken spinner
like a sunken swimmer,
saw you in the reflecting pool
early summer
one of those steamy hot days
still feel buzzed
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Installation images by Shark Senesac