Lee Maida
Odalisque, 2015
Glazed ceramic
15 x 14.5 x 2.5 inches
4111.1 x 78.7 x 2.5 cm
Lee Maida
Spiritual in Art, 2015
Glazed ceramic
23 x 14 x 14 inches
58.4 x 35.6 x 35.6 cm
Lee Maida
Feelings, 2015
Glazed ceramic
4 x 7 x 6 inches
10.2 x 17.8 x 15.2 cm
Lee Maida
Katie Cruel, 2015
Glazed ceramic on grout
17.5 x 17.5 x 17.5 inches
44.5 x 44.5 x 44.5 cm
Joe Sheftel Gallery is pleased to present Lit End, Lee Maida’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. An opening reception will be held on Sunday, April 19, from 6-8pm. The exhibition will be on view through May 24, 2015.
Lit End is comprised of a series of paintings, both two and three dimensional, produced by a variety of processes and only sporadically employing brush or paint. Each object is constructed in an ambivalent relationship with both grid and lump, as Maida repeatedly constructs the face.
The face is a critical zone for Maida as the location connoting sensual, spiritual and cerebral engagement and emotive expression. In Notes on Thought and Vision, the imagist writer H.D. proposes her concept of an extra-cranial brain that is the creative center synthesizing mind and body. She imagined this as “a jellyfish placed over and about the brain,” whose tentacles extend downward to connect to the body in a similar fashion to the spinal chord and nervous system. This synthetic expression is the subject of Maida’s work in the sense that it is what is studied and rendered rather than simply performed.
Maida’s art historical investigations center around this timeless mind/body ideal. In a free-associative manner, she cannibalizes a random selection of forms, symbols and strategies as a way of working through power, libido and identity-formation. Observation is key as the tissue between the ambiguous soup of subjective creation and the receipt of the communication rendering language both an obstacle and a tool.
“They were constantly arguing about art and each of them, at first, had his own ideas and his own style. Jawlensky was far less intellectual than Kandinsky or Klee and was often frankly puzzled by their theories. My 1908 portrait entitled ‘Zuhören’ (Listening, fh) actually represents Jawlensky, with an expression of puzzled astonishment on his chubby face, listening to Kandinsky’s new theories of art.” — Gabriele Münter 1
Lee Maida (b. 1983) received her BFA from California College of the Arts and her MFA from Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts (2013) where she was the recipient of the Judith L. Cohen and Lawrence R. Klein Fellowship for Sculpture. She has exhibited her work at Kate Werble, Derek Eller, Andrew Kreps, Andrew Edlin, Taxter & Spengeman and Ed. Varie in New York and ACP, Parker Jones and Commonwealth & Council Los Angeles. Maida recently completed residencies at the Abrons Art in New York and the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.
For press inquiries and images, please contact the gallery at mail@joesheftelgallery.com.
1. [“Roditi, Edouard. Dialogues: Conversations with European Artists at Mid-Century (London, United Kingdom: Lund Humphries, 1990), 117.]↩