Tif Sigfrids is happy to present the first solo exhibition in our new location of Los Angeles-based artist Mimi Lauter. The exhibition, entitled Visions From the Past and the Future will open with a reception on April 13th from 4-6 PM and remain on view through May 25th.

In Visions From the Past and the Future, Lauter presents three new large scale works and a group of miniature works that the artist made during recent trips to Paris and the Redwood Forest in Northern California. The works, all comprised of oil and soft pastel on paper, straddle expansive distinctions of scale while simultaneously hedging their relationship to abstract and representational gestures. The densely layered and acutely detailed compositions all seem to tell a story unfurled over the protracted time of their making. Alluding to a history grounded in early modernism, it is easy to imagine the artist at home in the gardens of post-impressionist painters.

The group of works, all titled Visions From the Past and the Future, originate in a body of work that touches on allegorical themes including shipwrecks and floods. Secluded amongst the dense layers of oil and soft pastel, representations of fish and boats are etched into abundant floral landscapes. The biblically minded might interpret these seemingly hidden representations as harbingers of the great flood and subsequent replenishment of the earth. True to the title for all of the works in the show, viewers are reminded of a contemporary moment inextricably linked to the flood myths of human cultures from a distant past and the all to near future.

Mimi Lauter (b. 1982, San Francisco) received her BA at the University of California, Los Angeles and her MFA from University of California, Irvine. Her work is currently on display at the Marciano Foundation in Los Angeles and is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation. Recent solo exhibitions of her work have taken place at Blum and Poe (Los Angeles), Shane Campbell Gallery (Chicago), and Derek Eller Gallery (New York).