Exhibitions

Birch Libralato is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Micah Lexier, which will be shown alongside three new collaborations. All the works in the exhibition play with found materials. In the main space, Lexier will be premiering pieces from the Things Exist series, consisting of fragments of cardboard boxes and other equally cryptic source material that have been cropped by the artist and presented in custom-designed frames. These framed works are presented alongside a series of idiosyncratically-chosen objects presented in specially built vitrines. Although Lexier has long been interested in found materials and has been using and transforming them since he was a student, only in the past few years has he started to present the objects themselves, untransformed, as his finished work. An early example is Plate and Saucer from 2001. In 2005, he produced the photographic series Two Pairs and A Palindrome, which featured scans of pieces of paper he found on the streets of New York. In that same year Lexier began presenting large groupings of found objects in vitrines; however, these were exclusively shown in public gallery settings and often existed as groupings only for the duration of the exhibition. With Things Exist, Lexier has isolated individual items or carefully grouped a few objects together to create individually-framed pieces that are intended to stand alone. By cropping a cardboard box just so, or turning a piece of paper over, Lexier’s light touch allows us see these quotidian items as surprisingly beautiful.

In addition to the Things Exist work, Lexier will be presenting three collaborations that are also made in relation to found imagery. Lexier’s collaborators include Ken Nicol, Roula Partheniou, and Joy Walker. All three artists are represented by MKG127.

Even the title do the show, Things Exist, is a found object, taken from a 1891 quote by Stéphane Mallarmé: “Things exist, we do not have to create them, we only have to grasp their relations.” Not only is this the source of the exhibition’s title, but it is an appropriate and succinct introduction to Lexier’s exhibition.