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Beth Lipman takes new ownership of the still-life genre combining social commentary
with a personal narrative in two major installations created for the de Rigueur exhibition.
In the Bride Lipman presents the wedding as a fulcrum in a woman’s life in which the
exquisite emblematically collides with the quotidian and a woman’s desire for purity,
order and beauty is constantly frustrated by the chaos of daily life. The piece is a 10-ft.
tall five-tier dessert stand filled with glass objects. The top tier is set with an orderly crown
of candles, which gives way to a tier of stemware. The third layer contains a fuller
arrangement of cups and bowls and below them is an opulent laid table-like installation.
The lowest layer explodes with an overwhelming assemblage of all the parts from tiers
above. The Bride, like life itself, goes from order to chaos or chaos to order depending
on which direction your eye travels. Lipman uses the height and stratification of the
piece to prevent us from seeing it in its entirety and therefore from actually or visually
possessing it. In doing so she reexamines her questions about the complex relationships
between satisfaction, knowledge, and the human desire to possess.
The Whatnots take their name from a piece of furniture popular in England in the 19th
century, designed to contain various collectibles. Lipman’s version consists of two
wooden multi-shelf corner units, which hold a collection of souvenirs from her own life
remade in black glass, a material synonymous with Victorian mourning jewelry.
Understanding the intimate connection between the souvenirs – many of them gifts to
the artist from other artists – makes these Whatnots autobiographical. Taken out of
context they demonstrate the banality of our object-obsessed lifestyles.
Beth Lipman studied at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and holds a B.F.A.
from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA. Her work is included in the collections of
the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; the
Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Speed
Museum, Louisville, KY; the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY, and the RISD Museum
of Art, Providence, RI as well as private collections nationwide.
Lipman has received critical acclaim from the Boston Globe and the New York Times for
her 2008 solo exhibition After You’re Gone, at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum
of Art in Providence, RI. Calling her work ‘wonderfully original,’ the Boston Globe
suggested, that she ‘is definitely someone to watch.’
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