December 03 – February 04, 2012

Opening reception: December 3, 2011

+   ARTIST PERFORMANCE

Lora Reynolds Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by New York-based artist Mads Lynnerup entitled ‘Help is on the way.' The artist will be performing at the gallery on December 3rd followed by a public talk that evening.

Lynnerup's work wryly engages and analyzes built environments and the widely accepted social behavior inherent in them in order to get at larger issues of alienation and perversity. Calling attention to the peculiarities of contemporary existence, Mads' work looks to specific objects and the potential they have to both adhere to and subvert these peculiarities.

Two sculptures in the exhibition each encourage participation, acting as art objects-cum-exercise equipment questioning the preciousness of the art object and their implied intellectual heft in favor of "mindless" physical exertion. Five prints, each titled Exercise Your Artist, feature images of figures exercising but replace the standard exercise equipment with virtual sculptures made by the artist. These virtual sculptures complicate signification, as do the actual sculptures in the show, further confusing the viewer and his or her desire to quickly recognize the artwork as such. A five-part piece made of sewn vinyl yoga mats that hangs from the wall uses images found in generic corporate promotional campaigns (such as pristine waterfalls, Earth as seen from space, other unspoiled natural environments, etc.) to comment on the idealization of our existence and the never-ending banal desire for self-improvement.

Mads Lynnerup lives and works in New York City and Copenhagen. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 2008. Lynnerup has shown his work internationally at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan), P.S. 1, and the Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw, Poland) and is in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, Miami Art Museum, Orange County Museum of Art and the San Jose Museum of Modern Art.