Rivington Arms is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by the New York-based artist collective Lansing-Dreiden. This is the group’s fourth solo show at Rivington Arms, featuring their first ever triptych paintings as well as drawings, collages, sculpture and three new musical compositions.

The work on view demonstrates Lansing-Dreiden’s continuing interest in the reinterpretation of established source material. Forms, patterns and imagery from previous works are cropped, isolated and reconfigured to illustrate the story of Lansing-Dreiden’s recent past and present. The collective’s story is pushed forward by the very re-examination of what it already knows about itself. As is usually the case with Lansing-Dreiden’s work opposing forces represented by light versus darkness, past versus future, cement versus stone, permeate the collection.

“Their real interest, I think, is in the broad metaphorical stuff that comes out of the story (opposites defining themselves, to themselves, in terms of one another; the nature of mythology; the languages of the corporation and new age literature; mirrors in mirrors and frames in frames, and so on). They’ve found a way to talk about big huge life and art and death themes that doesn’t descend into bathos, rely on autobiography, or choke on self-importance.” (Kevin Zucker, in What Was Once One published by Rivington Arms, New York, 2006, p.52)

Lansing-Dreiden’s triptychs sit on wooden ledges, the tops of the paintings leaning against the wall behind them. This manner of presentation allows the pictures to hover between painting and sculpture, detaching them from the tradition of the wall-hung image on canvas. Each panel within the series commemorates a work from Lansing-Drieden’s past. As certain images are combined with others—broken black mirror next to dazzle camouflage patterns next to painted stone configurations—new relationships are established and the panels become a united whole.

In keeping with the interpolative approach Lansing-Dreiden began with eight years ago, the paintings, drawings, sculptures and musical compositions in this exhibition are aimed at the content buried between past bodies of work, or creating new work from the ashes of the old.

Three Song EP Tri, 2008, available for free download at Lansing-Dreiden.com