This work by Gracelee Lawrence debuted in the group show Surface is Only a Material Vehicle for Spirit at Kavi Gupta in 2021, which was guest curated by sculptor Kennedy Yanko. The work is part of Lawrence's recent series of painted fiberglass sculptures referencing the female body in the visual language of digital space. The matte painting color is a nod to digital rendering aesthetics. The form appropriates food items and gendered human forms, interrogating our fears and dreams about emergent relationships between humanity, nature and technology.

Methodologically, Lawrence employs digital technology, such as scanning, 3-D printing, and digital fabrication, in order to construct the images and objects she ultimately creates. Conceptually, her work resolves in a dreamlike space in which feminine forms amalgamate with biomorphic forms or the forms of organic food stuff, such as celery stalks, sticks of asparagus, pineapples, and leaves.

A key concern in Lawrence’s practice is what it means to be an organic, physical body—whether human, vegetable, or animal—in digital space. Her works suggest a realm populated by biocyberorganisms, or an uncanny space between the physical and the digital. The works diligently mimic idealized forms of the real-world subjects on which they are based, while the matte colors that coat the works are specific to the palette of digital rendering software.

“How are fruit and vegetable and plant bodies intimately related to the digital world?” Lawrence asks. “The tropes of digital space affect how we imagine it. The aesthetic of digital space—what do we imagine it looking like, and what could it actually look like?”

Lawrence earned her MFA from University of Texas, Austin. Her work has been reviewed extensively, including in The New Yorker, Hyperallergic, Artnet News, ARTnews, and Paper Magazine. She has attended twenty residencies, and is a Visiting Professor of Sculpture at SUNY Albany, NY. In addition to exhibiting extensively throughout the US, Europe and Asia, she has installed large-scale public artworks in Poughkeepsie, NY; the Bronx, NY; Times Square, New York, NY; Shafer, MN; Hancock, VT; and Austin, TX.