Statement & Bio

At the heart of my artistic practice is a deliberate and open collaboration with my medium, prompting discovery in every painting. I paint on raw muslin with water, dyes, pigments, and other water-based mediums, creating images that both aspire toward transcendence and revel in their physicality.

Though I am a figurative artist, the starting point for each painting is the materials rather than my subjects. The materials themselves, coupled with my strange and often "incorrect" ways of using them, create a dynamic push and pull between deliberate and unintentional gestures and provide entry to my content. Copious amounts of water give rise to work that embraces fluidity. As I work, forms repeatedly emerge and dissolve as the rigidity of the medium and ground is eroded. The figure emerges and ultimately finds life through a process that is deliberately vulnerable and highly reactive.

Forms and figures within this work are semi-permeable, refusing to recognize the separation between outside and inside. They are directly at odds with a society dependent on clearly defined borders to maintain order and for whom permeability and malleability are feared as disruptors of ingrained systems and structures. The work provides a glimpse of another world – one in which vulnerability is celebrated instead of shamed and fluidity is embraced as a force of strength and connection.

Loren Erdrich (b. 1978) lives and works in New York City where she is currently represented by SHRINE gallery. Her undergraduate degrees include a BA, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA in 2000, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL in 2005. In 2007 she received her MFA from the Burren College of Art at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Erdrich has participated in many exhibitions including Harper’s (East Hampton, NY); Spring Break Art Show (New York, NY); Nicodim Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Superzoom (Miami, FL); Guts Gallery (London, UK) and Herrero Tejada (Madrid, SP). In 2023 Erdrich presented a solo exhibition at SHRINE gallery (New York, NY) following a two-person presentation at The Armory Show in 2022. Her second solo exhibition with the gallery opens late Spring 2024. Erdrich has also been awarded residencies at Yaddo; Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency; Jentel Foundation; Santa Fe Art Institute; Sculpture Space; Vermont Studio Center; and Art Farm Nebraska. Her work has been written about in publications such as Cultured; DNA Mexico; FAD; ArtMaze; Maake; the Chicago Tribune and Il Giornale Dell’Arte. She frequently collaborates with the poet Sierra Nelson, coauthoring the award winning I Take Back the Sponge Cake (published by Rose Metal Press, 2012) and Isolation (limited edition artist book, 2020), and in 2021 she collaborated with the fashion designer Marc Jacobs to incorporate her paintings into their Resort line.

IG: @okloren