The Directors of Marlborough are pleased to present the gallery’s first solo exhibition of the multidisciplinary artist Le’Andra LeSeur. LeSeur’s work employs a range of media including video installation, photography, and performance. The exhibition will open on Thursday, May 5, 2022, and remain on view through Friday, July 1, 2022.
Presented here will be LeSeur’s There are other hues of blue, a “standout” 6-channel video installation which was recently presented in the 2021 Atlanta Biennale. For this project, the artist utilizes her voice and body as a vessel to tap into a collective consciousness, framed through free, Black thought. The result manifests a meditative interrogation of liberation that can be found beyond pain.
Six suspended screens display blue fields of color pulled from a Facebook Live recording by 21-year-old Dreasjon Reed, who was killed by police on May 7, 2020. After Reed is shot, his camera falls and faces upwards towards the sun, causing an iridescent scattering of light, unintentionally displaying various hues of blue. The visuals synthesize this occurrence by drastically slowing, abstracting, and distorting the moment when the sun hits the lens, evoking a sense of stillness forcing the viewer to reckon with the power that transcendence has on our understanding of self. LeSeur explains:
There is so much violence in the world, so I’ve been thinking about the opposite of violence. We have to think about what happens after. Where are the small moments of tenderness and care? And I have been thinking about how beautiful it is to be alive and to carry out that potential for someone else who, tragically, can’t do it anymore.
In April of 2022, the PBS ALL ARTS Artist in Residence series premiered a documentary on LeSeur’s multimedia performance There is no movement without rhythm.
LeSeur has received several notable awards including the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Grant (2021), Leslie-Lohman Museum Artists Fellowship (2019), the Time-Based Medium Prize as well as the Juried Grand Prize at Artprize 10 (2018). LeSeur recently exhibited at the 2021 Atlanta Biennial, and appeared in conversation with Marilyn Minter at the Brooklyn Museum, presented by the Tory Burch Foundation. She has lectured at RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI, and SCAD Atlanta, among others.
Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at The Shed, New York, NY; Marlborough, New York, NY; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Assembly Room, New York, NY; Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Anacostia Art Center, Washington, D.C.; SITELAB, Grand Rapids, MI; Arnika Dawkins, Atlanta, GA; and others. Residences include ALL ARTS, NARS Foundation, Marble House Project, and MASS MoCA.
