Mary Laube

Casting Shadows

• Exhibition: March 4–March 30, 2019
• Reception: Thurs., March 7 at 6:00 pm
• Artist talk at 6:30 pm

Artist Bio

Mary Laube was born in Seoul, South Korea. She received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Her paintings are exhibited nationally with recent shows at the Spring Break Art Show (NYC), Field Projects (NYC), Coop Gallery (Nashville), and Whitdel Arts (Detroit). Her work has been supported by several artist residencies including the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Stiwdeo Maelor in Wales. She is also the co-founder of the Warp Whistle Project, a collaborative duo with composer Paul Schuette. Commissioned by the Network for New Music in Philadelphia, their latest concert work, The Navigator was recently premiered at the Caplan Studio Theater in Philadelphia. Laube has served as a visiting artist at various institutions including the Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar, Kent State University, and Knox College. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. 

Artist Statement

Prompted by the confusion between memory and imagination, I make work that originates from personal experiences with loss, displacement, and a search for ancestry. My recent work attempts to represent certain mysteries of my past by describing memory as a kind of surrogacy where ideology, personal mythology, and collectively built archetypes are folded together to stand in for various absences. 

I typically begin by pulling information from the objects that populate my life; from the places I visit daily and those I encounter while traveling. Through instinctual decision-making, the work develops as I look to various external sources such as memorial artifacts and structures, traditional Korean adornment, dollhouses, and museum displays to name a few. Pictorially, the paintings appear flattened yet physically retain a tactile and layered surface. This interaction between image and object reflects a kind of transference between concrete and ethereal worlds, functioning as a metaphor for the porous boundary between memory, imagination, and lived experience.