Strawberries & Other Secrets by Larissa Lockshin presented with Byline

Join us as we celebrate the opening of Larissa Lockshin’s latest installation in The Gallery at Ace Hotel Brooklyn – “Strawberries and Other Secrets.” 

Larissa Lockshin is best known for her vibrant, abstract paintings on satin with carved wood frames. Each piece is innately playful: ethereal interpretations of nature emit movement and wonder. Lockshin uses unconventional materials and alluring color combinations to create work that is equally approachable and elevated. She pays homage to traditional painting theory while employing unusual materials like satin, bridging the gap between ‘high art’ and ‘craft’. The theme of “play” is constant in the artist’s work, creating a confectionary world in which no rules apply.

Her latest exhibition at Ace Hotel Brooklyn is no exception to the artist’s rules. For this presentation, eight works are hung panoramically, invoking the artist’s connection to landscape painting, each window telling a short story. Using oil and soft pastels without the assistance of brushes or utensils, she marks amorphous forms and verdant blots on pearlescent, unprimed satin. Her pieces evoke lush foliage, winding roads, and rapturous landscapes speckled with flora but lean into abstraction as an exploration of texture, form, and materiality. 

Speaking of her process, Lockshin shares, “After stretching a layer of satin over a layer of canvas. I dye the satin using custom mixed fabric dyes and a paintbrush. Then, I begin making marks with soft pastels and oil pastels, leaving some of the satin ground shining through. This creates a tension between the matte and shiny textures that can only truly be appreciated in person, as the viewer moves around the piece and with varied lighting. After the painting is complete, I build and carve the pine wood frames using hand tools. Each painting is titled after an existing  real-life race horse, as no two names can ever be used twice and references the small variations in composition and lighting in spite of the repetitive material apparatus.” 

The exhibition is on view in The Gallery at Ace Hotel Brooklyn from March 3 – May 29. 

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Larissa Lockshin (b. 1992, Toronto) works with hand-dyed fabrics and hand-carved frames that blur the lines between painting and drawing. Her hand conjures hearts, stars, birds, petals, quivering grasses – are tugged in opposition as they dance on luminous supports. The gestures tend toward soft ocellated forms, mottled marks and smudgy vegetal blots in a garden. These wavering strokes mimic the shape of thoughts, evanescent waves of emotions, as if the wind might change course at any moment, carrying wisps of cinder or a hint of morning frost.

Recent solo and duo exhibitions include Europa, New York, NY (2023), Cob Gallery, London, UK (2023); Larissa Lockshin + Giorgio van Meerwijk, Pipeline Contemporary, London, UK (2023); Recent group exhibitions include James Cohan Gallery, New York City (2024), 12.26 Gallery, Dallas and Los Angeles, USA (2024), Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona, Spain (2023); Pipeline Contemporary, London, UK (2023); Baronian Xippas, Brussels (2021).

Byline is the culture magazine at the forefront of new media in New York, was conceived of as a place for contributors to be themselves. It was founded in 2023 by editors Gutes Guterman and Megan O’Sullivan, who have chosen the theme “art as play” for their curatorial throughline, presenting four artists for their insights into this paradox of pleasure and productivity.

Ace Artist in Residence program, curated in partnership with collectives and institutions that inspire us, provides time to think and space to create. Every quarter, we invite artists across the globe to turn one of our hotel rooms into their studio for a month, then showcase the resulting body of work with the Ace community.