Sara Meltzer Gallery is pleased to present Universal Solvent, an exhibition of new works by Lee Boroson.

In this new body of work Lee Boroson considers cultural influences on our perception of the natural world. He views landscape as a construct, a very particular point of reference to view the natural world. With a deep interest in the Hudson River School painters and their attempt to capture nature, his interests lie in issues of denial, appropriation and ownership as they relate to representation and current environmental concerns. The works in Universal Solvent consider the containment of landscape through the sculptural representation of elemental forces, reassembling these components in one environment. By choosing subjects that are not conducive to being sculpture – water, ice, and smoke – he confronts the impossible task of capturing natural phenomena that are visually real, yet substantively ineffable, transient or evanescent.

Universal Solvent creates a fictional landscape that considers the ability that materials have to speak to the condition or state of another material or substance. The sculptures are concrete and descriptive but not deceptive – they abandon realism for abstraction, often uncovering naturally occurring patterns that generate form. The works embody the stillness of sculpture versus the fluidity of nature: a cascading waterfall composed of hundreds of silk tassels; a resin cast of a puddle of water; miniature icebergs perched on beds of illuminated crystals. These works and others are presented underneath crypt-like vaulted arcs of billowing smoke clouds in the form of an inflatable sculpture; a reoccurring mode in Boroson’s practice.

Lee Boroson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Upcoming exhibitions include Esther Massry Gallery, The College at St. Rose, Albany, NY and GLOW, Santa Monica, CA. He has had solo exhibition at various venues including The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Artspace, New Haven, CT; Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE and The Whitney Museum of American Art at Phillip Morris, New York. Boroson has received numerous awards including grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Professional Development Grants from the Rhode Island School of Design. He received a MFA from Indiana University, a BFA from State University of New York, New Paltz and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.