This event was recorded on July 21, 2022 at Anderson Ranch Art Center during the 2022 Summer Series, in partnership with Aspen Public Radio.
Liz Larner (b. 1960, Sacramento, CA) attended the California Institute of the Arts, where she received a BFA in 1985.
Larner’s work explores and extends the conditions and possibilities of sculpture. Her works are informed by the relationship between object, viewer, and their surroundings as well as a deep interest in a wide array of materials and their particular qualities. She experiments with abstract sculpture made in fiberglass, crystals, paper, clay, aluminum, steel, rubber, epoxy, mirror, cloth, and even bacteria. An inventor of new forms, Larner creates sculptures which defy easy description by design.
In April 2022, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis will present a survey exhibition of Larner’s work, Don’t put it back like it was, co-organized with SculptureCenter, Long Island City, where it was mounted earlier this year. In June 2022, Kunsthalle Zürich will open an exhibition dedicated to Larner’s work titled below above. Past solo and two-person museum exhibitions include the Aspen Art Museum (2016); Art Institute of Chicago (2015); Space is better than time, but time is okay, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2015); Two or Three or Something: Maria Lassnig, Liz Larner, Kunsthaus Graz (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001–02); MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (1998); and Kunsthalle Basel (1997).
Larner has been commissioned for public artworks including the Byron G. Rogers Federal Building and Courthouse Plaza, Denver (2015); University of California, San Francisco Mission Bay Project (2003); and the Riverside Pedestrian Bridge at Walt Disney Studios, Burbank (2000).
The artist has received numerous awards, including the Mutina This Is Not a Prize (2018); the Nancy Graves Foundation Grant (2014); Pacific Design Center Stars of Design Award (2005); Smithsonian American Art Museum Lucelia Artist Award (2002); and the Guggenheim Fellowship (1999).
Work by the artist is held in prominent international collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; among others.
She lives and works in Los Angeles.