Philadelphia, PA

Lorraine Glessner sees living things as leaving a physical mark, a stain or an imprint. The cyclic nature of the earth and our bodies serve to jog the mind, to remind us of the propensity to seek progress within cycle, and to measure that progress against the repetitive constant. Layers of holes, cracks, smudges, graffiti and signage on the surfaces of the earth, the body and within urban environments speak to this cycle and read as a palimpsest on which personal, political and cultural histories are written. As the inveterate layers of marks intermingle and merge with the new, they create an iconography significant to the present, yet allude to both the past and future. Lorraine Glessner's intent is to follow and record these marks as evidence of the spectacle.

This framework serves as infrastructure for subsequent layers of recorded marks in the form of stained fabrics and papers, rubbings, tracings and drawings taken from city surfaces and environments. Along with Glessner's intuitive responses to them in paint, the layers and marks merge together as circuitous networks that interconnect, meld, splinter and discontinue only to begin again as another series of marks. Adding to this narrative are clusters of collaged images and patterns from high-end fashion and interior design magazines, street photographs and found materials, which interact with and contextualize the markings as well as speak to our excessive wants, needs, temptations and desires as a culture. In a continuous process of organization and chaos, accrual and removal, concealment and exposure, the layers of paint, fabric, and wax create new narratives, which look through and into time, thus reminding us of perpetuation, synthesis and regeneration.