Walter Maciel Gallery is pleased to announce a solo show by Los Angeles based artist Lezley Saar. Saar has had numerous museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the US and this will be her first show with the gallery.

The subject in Lezley Saar’s new work depicts the unedited intelligence of her autistic teenage daughter.   Referencing a surrealist format, the work is formatted into large scale drawings of fantastical environments linked together by various stems and roots of imaginative plant life.   Often the networks lead to bubbles of visual information within obsessively patterned borders. The imagery is mostly collaged photos taken by the artist from her travels and personal experiences in the world.  The photos contain bits of random information like architectural details or close up section of human anatomy that that tell create a visual dialogue mimicking the chaotic yet highly organized mind of an autistic child.  In one drawing a photo of a doll is linked to images of rural landscapes that are connected to examples of different porcelain figurines telling a story of the passing of a young girl’s life.  The photographs are surrounded by detailed floral patterns with tentacles, arms, legs, wings and tails sprouting from each nucleus like visions from a dream.  Personal issues such as race and gender have always been important statements in Saar’s work and continue to play into the significance of some of the scenes. 

Saar currently has a survey of her work in a traveling museum show entitled Family Legacies: The Art of Betye, Lezley and Alison Saar.   She received a BFA from the California State University, Northridge in 1978.  Saar has had museum exhibitions at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, Palmer Art Museum in Pennsylvania, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Kansas City, Fresno Art Museum, The Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati and Forum for Contemporary Art in St. Louis.  Her work is included in several private and public collections throughout the US and she has exhibited regularly at galleries in New York and Los Angeles since 1991.  In 1996 Saar was the recipient of a J. Paul Getty Mid-Career Grant.