This body of work exhibits an interest in drawing which manifests as an in-depth exploration of the creative possibilities of the humble pencil and its core ingredient: graphite. Using this singular tool and medium, Lauren Seiden creates unexpected drawings, sculptures, and installations; in doing so they upend the hierarchy of art materials and diversify the male-dominated canon of sculpture and its associated discussions on form, materials, and process.

Seiden has also developed unique but labor intensive processes - she gilds all her surfaces by hand, methodically drawing on paper, stone and cloth - a task so labor-intensive it seems an obsessive, almost devotional act. In her latest body of work this consuming process is not purely an aesthetic decision; Seiden is making a statement on the concept of labor, about what kind of labor is valued and seen and what is invisible. The social justice commentary, busier form and more embellished surface of her sculptures set Seiden apart from historic Minimalists for whom sculpture was a formal exercise unburdened by symbolism, and connects her to post-Minimalist practitioners- who also engaged in investigations of materials but imbued their creations with potent messages.

Seiden’s pencil on paper works are sculptures. Working with oversized sheets, Seiden manipulates her paper before approaching it with a pencil. She wets each sheet then crumples and folds it. Once dry, the paper retains its three-dimensional form and Seiden allows the organic topography of the resulting sculpture to guide her as she patiently fills the valleys and crevasses with graphite. There is a balance of strength and fragility, allowing for necessary manipulations of the material in order to maintain stability...an equilibrium of loss and gain; capturing fragile, temporary moments trapped in stasis. In Raw Wraps, Seiden leaves the peaks of the folds unmarked, using the white of the paper as part of her tonal range and giving the finished piece the chiaroscuro of a snow capped mountain. Her Shield Wraps conversely show no white at all, the paper is so laden with graphite that these pieces can be mistaken for sheets of folded metal, to an almost gothic darkness.

Choosing the lowly pencil as your primary tool and thus graphite as your primary medium is a subversive act; it upends the hierarchy of art materials by challenging the primacy of oil paint, stone, and other ‘high’ materials. Seiden pushes this concept even further in her marble and graphite sculptures. Taking pencil to stone, Seiden traces over naturally occurring marble veins, building layer upon layer of marks until the marble has been adorned with a second skin, thus cloaking one of art’s most elevated materials with arguably the most basic. Seiden’s unorthodox use of graphite continues in her large scale installations where she sprinkles graphite over water, creating a mercurial skin on the surface - a skin that forms abstract shapes that shift and break like tectonic plates as the water moves and evaporates.

Lauren Seiden lives and works in New York City

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Text by curator, Sarah Burney