
Reef
<p>The ceramic medium reflects sculptor Liz Larner’s affinity for compositions that redefine our relationship<br>to space and our environment. To create <em>Reef</em>, Larner mixed foraged elements such as rocks and minerals into a clay formation. She then subjected them to the process of firing and glazing, which can cause radically different outcomes depending on the conditions. The work’s hybrid makeup and the contingent process that created it serve as material metaphors for the relationship between humans and the natural environment, as something that is reciprocal, unpredictable, and at times fragile. Indeed, for Larner, sculpture is a “medium that can address how our world is produced and the factors that go into forming it.”</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 2019
- Dimensions
- 12.7 × 414 × 229.9 cm (5 × 163 × 90 1/2 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Liz Larner
Artist

Mixed Media
Liz Larner’s geometric sculptures explore the fundamental qualities of formalist sculpture: volume and mass, line and substance, and the potential of positive and negative space. Her virtuosic works include 2001 (2001), a public installation that fused a cube and a sphere in a massive, glossy form; RWBs (2005), which she presented at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, was a messy tangle of red, white, and blue wires, at once massive and airy. Larner’s best-known early work is her “Culture” series of the late 1980s, for which she placed odds and ends in petri dishes and allowed bacteria to form naturally on and decay the objects.
Full artist profile →Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Liz Larner
- Year
- 2019
- Dimensions
- 12.7 × 414 × 229.9 cm (5 × 163 × 90 1/2 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-2019-142623
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified