Leigh Anne Lester: No Necessary Time Axis on Evolutionary Novelties

Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present No Necessary Time Axis on Evolutionary Novelties, a solo exhibition of new works by Leigh Anne Lester. The exhibition will open to the public with a reception on Wednesday, March 27, 2019, from 6:00 – 8:00 PM. The show is accompanied by a catalogue featuring an essay by Hills Snyder.

Long interested in how the natural world evolves and changes, Lester creates a body of work that encompasses an intergenerational microscopic and macroscopic view of abstracted information. “The work in the show is a recurring visual vocabulary. If the viewer follows those clues they will find information resurfacing in different pieces throughout this exhibit. A very slow-motioned animation of generational manifestations” explains Lester.

Patricia Ruiz-Healy states, “I have admired the work of Lester for a while. Her personal interpretation of genetic modification pair with a masterful draftsmanship and the incorporation of other medium has brought to the long-established botanical drawings tradition a 21^st C. aesthetic.”

Her drawings are layers of semi-transparent drafting film with a historical botanical drawn on each layer. The transparency of the drafting film allows the line of each botanical to optically blend with the next layer. Elements of each of the plants mix and tangle their visual attributes intermingling disparate species of flora. Floating cells are layered with graphite drawings of separate distorted offspring plants with their color drained, implying a cellular, morphological struggle for resolution.

Lester’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States. Her solo exhibitions include McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; Institute of Texan Cultures, San Antonio, TX; Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX; and the International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago, IL. She is the recipient of prestigious awards including the 2011 Hunting Prize and the Artist Foundation of San Antonio in 2007. In 2015, she was selected to participate in the Berlin Residency Program by Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum in partnership with Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany. Lester’s artworks are in the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, McNay Art Museum and the University of Texas at San Antonio, among other institutions.

view exhibition on artsy

download exhibition catalogue