LIZ MAGOR

Two fists extend from the gallery walls, each grasping a turning mass that extends to the floor below. As gyres stopped in motion, their coils are stacked in knots and twists, adopting a nearly bodily dimension. Equipped with two small eyes, it’s difficult to avoid personifying these strange creatures as they direct a shocked stare towards the viewer, wordless, or out of breath. The interjection of the uncanny pervades Magor’s work, as seen in Episode2024 a continuation of an ongoing series in which Magor meticulously replicates packing materials. Here, cardboard cast in gypsum is bent and folded, forming a compressed chamber that cradles a gleaming object inside. Supported by two bowed legs, the sculpture enacts a tenuous balance. This tension becomes a site of exploration for Magor, as each work represents a form of collision, whether it be between hard and soft, the fleeting and permanent, the anonymous and the personal, or even what is made and what is found. Throughout her work, Magor, with her own degree of humour, tests the limits of our ability to assign narrative and empathy to inanimate objects.

Liz Magor lives and works in Vancouver. Over the past four decades, Magor has developed a singular practice rooted in sculpture that employs traditional mold-making techniques to replicate everyday items and explore our need for comfort and attachment. Familiar objects are often at the centre of her sculptures - those that play fleeting roles in our lives as tools of aspiration before, inevitably, being replaced.

This summer, a major installation of Liz Magor’s works will be presented at The Campus, Claverack, New York, opening Saturday, June 28. Personalize is Magor’s third exhibition with the gallery. Recent solo exhibitions of Magor’s work include The Separation, MOCA, Toronto, 2023, The Rise and Fall, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, UK, travelled to Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, and Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, 2023, One Bedroom Apartment, Esker Foundation, Calgary, Canada, 2020, TIMESHARE, 500 Capp Street Foundation, San Francisco, 2019, BLOWOUT, Carpenter Center for the Arts, Cambridge, traveled to The Renaissance Society, Chicago, 2019, you, you, you, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, traveled to The Modern and Contemporary Art Museum of Nice, Nice, and Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, 2017, The Blue One Comes in Black, Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry - le Crédac, Paris, 2016, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, 2016, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2015, Peep-hole, Milan, 2015, Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver, 2014, and Triangle France, Marseilles, 2013. In addition, she has had solo exhibitions at Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, 2008, the Power Plant, Toronto, 2003, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, 2002. Magor participated in Documenta 8, Kassel, 1987, and the 41st Venice Biennale, Venice, 1984. In 2017, Magor was an artist-in-residence at the Berlin Artists-in-Residence programme, DAAD, Berlin, and in 2014, was awarded the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, Gershon Iskowitz Foundation and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.