125 Maiden Lane – New York, New York
February 23, 2006 – April 30, 2006
In Romance 2006, Nathaniel Lieb has virtually created and finessed a new genre, perhaps kindred in spirit to the love letter. The process, painstaking, tender, and evident in all the work, engages us with its simple testimony to the rituals of intimacy, earnest and human as breathing itself. Salt, vellum, tissue paper and more are combined to form a love song. Mining these materials for their iconic and symbolic resonance a strange and beautiful synthesis occurs. Material and form reverberate off of each other, building the depths of togetherness.
In the sculpture Failing for You, salt turns into bone and floats below a swarm of yellow and black tiger swallowtails, recalling the intricacy of a Byzantine mosaic.
In The Killer Inside Me, a cricket chirps its solitary song within the translucent skin of a five-foot puffer fish. Its emotional gesture captured inside a defensive posture.
The most striking quality in Nathaniel Lieb’s art is the emotional touch in the artist’s process. It is there in every aspect of the work from the obvious gestalt that greets you, to their meditative, micro-macro details. The qualities of fragility and strength work in tandem bridging a union of both.
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Romance 2006 is curated by Elisabeth Akkerman and is sponsored by the Time Equities Inc. (TEI) Art-in-Buildings Program. TEI is committed to enriching the experience of our properties through the Art-in-Buildings Program, an innovative approach that brings contemporary art by emerging and mid-career artists to non-traditional exhibition spaces in the interest of promoting artists, expanding the audience for art, and creating a more interesting environment for our building occupants, residents, and their guests.
