Beth Lipman: Every Last Thing

Contemporary artist Beth Lipman exhibits simultaneously at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York and the Nohra Haime Gallery:

Every Last Thing at Nohra Haime Gallery 
November 5–January 16, 2021

American artist Beth Lipman explores themes of time and human precarity through the use of cultural objects and prehistoric flora. Endangered plants, latent humanoid forms and communal emblems allude to mortality and transience, fossilized in glass and metal. This marks her first solo exhibition with Nohra Haime Gallery.

Lipman’s sculptural practice explores aspects of material culture and deep time through still lives, site-specific installations, and photographs. Ephemeral and intricate, the work addresses mortality, materiality, and temporality, critical issues since the inception of the still life tradition in the 17th century, that continue to be relevant.

Every Last Thing features several new works, including All In All, a large-scale mixed media sculpture that alludes to the layered, porous nature of time. A fantastical paleolithic landscape of extinct and existent flora encrusts the surface of a table while countless upended vessels precariously cling to the underside. The body politic becomes the subject of Lipman’s work, revealing our past as we navigate through the present, leaving traces of ourselves, apparent only in the future.

In the Distill series, the artist placed ancient flora such as conifer, lichen, ginkgo, and ferns inside cardboard boxes arranged with miniature furniture to create small-scale dioramas. Forcing the relationship between prehistoric and current geological eras, these uncanny scenarios were molded in resin, bonded with sand, and filled with molten brass or iron. The casting process simultaneously created replicas and destroyed the landscapes, ultimately translating the vignettes into fossilized depictions of the Anthropocene era.

Every Last Thing cleverly intertwines the raw transience of nature with the manmade, shining a light on our forlorn past. The result is an eerie yet enchanting landscape that contemplates our permanence and paves the way for hopeful visions of the future.

Nohra Haime Gallery
500 W 21 St, NYC
T 212 888 3550, gallery [​at​] nohrahaimegallery.com



Collective Elegy at the Museum of Arts and Design
September 25–August 15, 2021

This major midcareer survey assesses the remarkable achievements of the renowned contemporary artist. From sumptuous displays of excess, including provocative installations comprising hundreds of individual glass elements, to poetic and contemplative works in glass, metal, clay, video, and photography, the works on view are ethereal meditations on time and mortality and simultaneously sobering indictments of our contemporary consumer culture and its impact on the planet.

“For more than twenty years, Beth has built on the still-life tradition, illustrating the ability of objects to signify wealth, class, and identity. She further critiques Western society’s capitalist values and the environmental consequences of unfettered consumption,” said Samantha De Tillio, MAD’s curator of collections. “A new project, House Album, investigates the subjectivity of history and the necessity of including a wider range of voices in its telling; a topic of particular importance in 2020.”

Lipman’s monumental Laid (Time-) Table with Cycads forms the centerpiece of the exhibition. Melding landscape and tablescape through representations of prehistoric plant life bursting forth through a table laden with goblets, bowls of fruit, books, textiles, and other cultural markers, the work evokes the interdependence and tension between humanity and the natural world.

“Collective Elegy represents a decade of investigation centering the human condition, demarcating the present moment in deep time,” said Lipman. “In this sense, the work examines aspects of material culture and history through still lifes, site-specific installations, and photographs.”

Museum of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle, NYC
T 212 299 7777, press [​at​] madmuseum.org