Congratulations to Elizabeth Turk on the opening of her two-person show at the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park! Double Take brings together the work of two past MacArthur Fellowship recipients, Turk and acclaimed sculptor Mel Chin. Both artists use a variety of techniques and materials in their work, focusing on themes related to the natural world: environmental protection, conservation, and endangered species. Thank you to the team at the Meijer Gardens for bringing the work of these two artists together! The exhibition remains on view through March 26, 2023.
Congratulations to Elizabeth Turk on the occasion of her solo exhibition at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. Visualize avian voices via sculptures inspired by the recorded calls of extinct or endangered birds. Resembling a forest of vertical forms, the sculptures by California- and New York-based artist Elizabeth Turk are enhanced by interactive elements: scannable recordings of the lost or endangered birds’ voices. The recordings, many sourced from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, are visually represented by lines of varying lengths. After the California wildfires drastically depleted bird populations, Turk began re-orienting the sonograms vertically and into three dimensions for her sculptures. “These structures,” Turk said, “are made for interaction to prompt thought and spark conversation by begging the question, ‘Are we creating a silence?’”
While H&A is open and welcoming visitors, we understand that there are those of you who are unable to visit the gallery. As a result, we are happy to share this virtual tour of our current exhibition. Produced by Jonah Koplin, this short video allows those of you who cannot travel to the gallery a chance to enjoy Elizabeth Turk's latest body of work. We hope to see you again at the gallery soon!
Hirschl & Adler Modern is proud to present an exciting new project, Tipping Point—Echoes of Extinction, the latest body of work by the internationally-recognized sculptor Elizabeth Turk. While furthering her exploration into the overlap of art and nature, Turk confronts a globally important issue: Extinction. Tipping Point employs sculpture, sound, and technology to ask: what role can humans play in the preservation of a species, including our own? Are we at a tipping point? Turk highlights this relevant environmental concern with her Sound Columns—elegant visualizations of the lost voices of birds and sea mammals. These 27 sculptures, fabricated in wood, aluminum, 3-D printed ABS filament, and bronze, take their form directly from the calls of various animals that are, today, extinct or endangered.
The 16-page catalogue includes a checklist with links to the bird calls and aquatic mammal sounds, many archived at the Macaulay Library of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Click here to learn more about the exhibition.
Born in Pasadena and raised in Orange County, Elizabeth Turk earned her M.F.A. at the Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
In Turk’s work, the shape of the line is created by extreme loss. That is, the reductive process of carving creates a positive, fragile form in which the absence of the original material is a focus. Turk encourages us to consider how nature has shaped these organic materials long before the artist’s manipulation of them into new forms. When viewed as components in a complex natural system, their singular beauty and inherent mystery is revealed. Turk compels us to view works of art not only as objects to be coveted and collected, but also as expressions of the natural world and our evolving relation to it.
A recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2010), a Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Fellowship (2010), and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2011), Turk is internationally recognized for transforming her signature medium of marble into strikingly intricate objects that defy convention and challenge our preconceptions of what marble can do. Through the use of electric grinders, dental tools, and files, Turk pushes her medium to its limit, creating in each sculpture a provocative tension between the intrinsic strength of the stone and its inherent fragility, while speaking to larger conceptual and spiritual concerns of time, matter, and space.
During the twenty-two years that Turk has been represented by Hirschl & Adler Modern, the gallery has mounted five extensive solo exhibitions of her work, each accompanied by publications; as well as a solo Art Kabinett at Art Basel Miami Beach (2012), a solo presentation at Masterpiece London (2014), and a solo presentation at the ADAA Art Show in 2017. Across all of these venues, the work was met with critical and commercial success from individuals based in South America, Europe, and the U.S.
Turk’s work resides in numerous prestigious private and public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; American University, Washington, D.C. (formerly, the Corcoran Gallery of Art) and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Weatherspoon Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; the Catalina Museum for Art & History, CA; and the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis, TN. Institutional monographic exhibitions include Tipping Point: Echoes of Extinction, Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI (2022); Double Take, with Mel Chin, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park (2022), Elizabeth Turk: Heaven, Earth, Home, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, VT (2018-19); Elizabeth Turk: Sentient Forms, Laguna Art Museum, CA (2015); Elizabeth Turk: Wings, The Dayton Art Institute, OH (2013); and Elizabeth Turk, The Collars: Tracings of Thought, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC (2004). The artist lives and works in Santa Ana, CA and New York, NY.
