Statement & Bio

Time is my great collaborator. Surrounded by a cultural imperative for speed, I have implemented the opposite in my work. I have arrived at a process and resultant paintings that require slowing down. This deceleration feels like a radical act.

A certain reading of my work is available on quick glance or when scrolled past on a screen. While that read is valid, sitting with these paintings, as I do, something else happens. At first the focus may be the individual elements – bright stains of dye, scratch marks of pastel, a nipple, an eye. With time it is possible to relax into the space between these elements. Variations in color slowly emerge and then shift as light in the room shifts. Slowly those things usually skipped over in search of instant gratification become apparent.

I am a figurative artist, yet the starting point for each painting is my materials rather than my subjects. I paint on raw muslin with water, dyes, pigments and other water-based mediums that are largely fluid, inherently difficult to control and prone to transgressing boundaries. These particular qualities of the materials, coupled with my strange and often "incorrect" ways of using them, create a dynamic push and pull between deliberate and unintentional gestures. Representational elements emerge over time through a process that is purposely vulnerable and highly responsive. The work is a celebration of fluidity as a force of both disruption and connection. As such, it positions itself at odds with a society dependent on fixed borders for stability – for whom permeability and malleability are threats to ingrained systems.


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