MARY LAUBE
HEAVY FLOWERS
August 7–23, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 7th, 5–7 pm
Artist Talk Reschduled - Date TBD
Gallery Hours: August 9, 16, 23, 1–4 pm and by appointment
Mary Laube (born Seoul, Korea, 1985) is an Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her MFA (2012) from the University of Iowa, and her BFA (2009) from Illinois State University. Laube has held recent solo exhibitions at Morgan Lehman Gallery (NYC), Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), Tristar Arts (TN), and the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art (IN).
Heavy Flowers is a brief departure from the imagery Laube typically works from. While some of the drawings still contain fragments of folk paintings, textiles, ornaments, and other culturally specific objects, they elude allegiance to any coherent origin. These drawings promiscuously reference an array of different imagery while exploring a range of gestural tendencies of her hand. Beginning with the assumption that drawing is free at the start, Heavy Flowers confronts the reality that this ideal becomes sullied the moment ink touches paper–crowded with a cluster of voices that may or may not be telling the truth. Rules to push up against are all fine and good–the provocation is not to absentmindedly dissolve them all, but to uncover what internal structures, inherited institutions, and belief systems may be unnecessarily limiting, suffocating or even harmful to the process. The pursuit looks like an internal conversation (a heated one)–full of doubt and overconfidence. The drawings are at times dark, funny, avoidant, confusing, fearful, and overworked. Heavy Flowers engages in a form of drawing that privileges experimentation over obedience.