Puff Puff PastLine Segment Where Two Faces Meet (weight bearing and locomotive)
Leif Low-Beer is interested in the idea that an installation, sculpture, or drawing can be a form of description – a way of telling stories that are familiar to us, but that cannot be expressed in words. His work explores the mute in-between of things: between known and unknown, sayable and unsayable, flat and dimensional. The independence of a small composition pulls against the order imposed by a larger environment – not entirely of it, but not fully apart from it either.Low-Beers work bears the marks of this narrative process, but the story remains open-ended and ambiguous, shifting through multiple frames and tellings. A piece often begins with a single object and moves outwards. The product and discards of his environment become incorporated into the work. Removed from their purpose and context, these objects are marks and begin to structure the kinds of stories that can be told. The sense of a given place comes to underwrite the work as a whole – from the selection (and availability) of materials, to the feeling for story itself.Throughout the process, he attempts to keep his movements spontaneous, maintaining a sense of openness and improvisation while staying within a larger set of rules and structures. A finished drawing sits first at the base of one assemblage, then becomes the backdrop for a different piece. A found-object offers him a new shape to work with, and becomes part of the life of the studio. Pieces meet and marry, living happily together — until perhaps they grow apart.
Leif Low-Beer was raised in Toronto and lives and works in Brooklyn and Berlin. His work explores the relationship between 2d and 3d environments, using a combination of drawing, found objects, photography, and sculpture. He has created installations for galleries both nationally, and internationally for the past 10 years. Leif studied philosophy and visual art at the University of Guelph in Canada and School of Visual Arts in New York City.