Gallery One, Chicago
The Runner, a new animated film and project series by Lauren Wy, foregrounds her second solo show at Western Exhibitions. Taking a cue from late 60’s and early 70’s films, especially Le Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard, the animation and its attendant drawings and paintings distill the spirit of fantasy escapism, of running away into a dream. The show opens on Friday, September 8, with a free public reception at our Chicago location from 5 to 8 pm. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm.
Wy’s animated film is a surrealist collage experiment utilizing analog processes with digital tools and altered frame rates to create a time-based pseudo-narrative drawing that embraces a raw provisionality. The short film is presented alongside a series of large-scale drawings and paintings on thin, mechanically flat synthetic surfaces. Inspired by American New Wave cinema and Science Fiction literature, Wy weaves her personal narrative into the collage as a further exploration of the Auto-theory elements present in her recent Autodesire series. The Runner animates saturated dancing color scenes of vintage cars speeding through dream landscapes. A woman character is an archetype, a titan, a goddess, a replicant, a Chimera, shapeshifting from human to animal to machine; from human skin to cheetah running, from feathered bird to Mercedes Benz; always pitched forward in the perpetual forward motion of running.
The Runner is a forgotten tarot card, political riot, outsider angel, animal hybrid, telekinetic, blessed by an infinite alien intelligence. The Runner rides the hard metal body of a car to and through desire. Long desert roads like the surface of Mars; forests darker than hell. The Runner is always a seeker; they are about seeking. Seeking Tanis, Runner Available. *
Western Exhibitions presented Lauren Wy’s (b. 1987, California) first solo show in 2021, debuting the first five Chapters of her multi-chapter project AUTODESIRE, individual drawings from a massive graphic novel — each presented on two small handmade wood panels, hinged, as to function simultaneously as drawing/sculpture/artist book — depicting an abstracted story of a heroine on a bacchanalian road trip. Chapter 9: Grift X of AUTODESIRE was recently acquired by Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, in Turin, Italy. Wy has been included in the 6th Athens Biennial in Greece and shown at Castello di Rivoli, Societe Interludio in Turin, Over the Influence in Los Angeles, Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zurich and Apparatus Projects in Chicago. Wy received her MFA from Northwestern University in 2020 and currently lives and works nomadically.
*Seeking Tanis, Runner Available is a reference to the Tanis Podcast by Terry Miles. The Runner is not affiliated with or represent this podcast.
watch a trailer for The Runner below:
Watch a narrated video walk-through of the show here:
Download an enhanced PDF preview at this link
Read a review in Newcity by Vasia Rigou at this link