Marilyn Lerner

The gallery is honored to present Marilyn Lerner’s new exhibition, Memory Is a Fickle Thing. One by one, her paintings toy with the idea of the works that came before them, yet they are completely new.

Lerner’s thirteen vibrantly colored and meticulously detailed oil paintings on wooden supports produce a vocabulary of her own distinct shapes with infinite variation. She extends her precise form and color relationships with the inclusion of subtle color gradients within the geometric shapes. These shapes are then enclosed by thin bands of color, building intense visual optical vibrations.

Lerner intuits color. Her palette comes from a deep understanding of color and sound. She does not rely on academic color theory to create the friction between border and shape, instead she addresses visual representations of sound, playing with the optics of color in a non-hierarchical way. Colors do not compete. Instead, they allow the eye to constantly hum through the work like a kaleidoscope, energy emitting within each piece.

This exhibition marks her third solo show with the gallery, and her first in the gallery’s new soho space.

Marilyn Lerner (USA, b. 1942 in Milwaukee, WI) received her BS from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, WI, and her MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to her time in New York City, Lerner has lived in Morocco, Bali and India. She has held solo exhibitions at galleries and institutions including Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY (2021, 2018); Cue Art Foundation, New York, NY (2016); Butler Gallery, Kilkenny Castle, Kilkenny, Ireland (2014); Robert Morrison Gallery, New York, NY (1992); John Good Gallery, New York, NY (1989, 1987); Kornblee Gallery, New York, NY (1976); and Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY (1969). Her work has been exhibited in group shows at venues including the Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Staten Island, NY; Madison Art Center, Madison, WI; PS1, New York, NY; the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others. Her work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; and the Office of Public Work for the State Art Collection of Ireland. She currently lives and works in New York, NY.