The Los Angeles–based artist Leslie Shows uses molds and unconventional materials such as laser-cut aluminum, resin, wood, Plexiglas, engraving on aluminum, and sulfur, in addition to paint and collage, to complete her monumental works. In her expansive and cryptic paintings she connects geologic timescales with urgent and intense imagery, while her sculptures of cast sulfur and visually rich, abstracted images of pyrite suggest ruptures of language, meaning, and substance. Shows aims to accurately depict an object’s source, yet at the same engage the alchemical mythology of its materials.
Her work has recently been exhibited at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona (2014), the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2014), Haines Gallery, San Francisco (2014, 2013, and 2011), the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska (2012), Richard L. Nelson Gallery, University of California, Davis (2012), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011, 2010, and 2007), Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2011), the Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2011), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2009 and 2008), the Oakland Museum of California (2007), and the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2006). Shows is the recipient of an Artadia Award (2009), the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship (2008), the SECA Art Award from SFMOMA (2006), and the Tournesol Award from Headlands Center for the Arts (2006).
