ST. LOUIS, MO.- Laumeier Sculpture Park presents the work of Deborah Aschheim in an exhibition which opens February 9, 2008. Continuing through May 11, 2008, the exhibition will transform the Laumeier galleries into an intensely immersive sensory experience. Deborah Aschheim comes from a family with a history of Alzheimer’s disease. As a result, much of Aschheim’s work focuses on creating sculptural and interactive multi-sensory responses to neuroscience, memory and cognitive processes. Much of the work emanates from her personal experiences.
"…the thing that I wanted to do next, was also the scariest thing for me — to do more autobiographical work — something where I would be dealing with the networks of memory, but also incorporating my own specific memories, autobiographical memories and how memories come up almost involuntarily,” Aschheim said. “I am really interested in things that are both literal and metaphorical.”
The exhibition will include a refined version of her six-part series of neural network installations. Among new work in the exhibition will be a site-specific “memory web,” an expansive network of video and sound, linked by LED light nodes and colored plastic fibers, that will wind though rooms (public and private) of the museum itself. Aschheim will also create an outdoor work, Arborization — a network-based sculpture making a visual connection between the microscopic systems of the body, the electrical networks of the city and the branching patterns of the living trees supporting it. Additionally, a gallery will be reserved for video, sound works and ephemera from many of the artist’s perception experiments as well as video from the artist’s medical experiments and material from recent collaborations with musicians.
Aschheim is an energetic and obsessive artist, constantly educating herself, conducting experiments and branching out in her practice. Her trans-disciplinary approach to art reaches from paint and velum to Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
Deborah Aschheim (b. 1964) received a B.A. in Anthropology from Brown University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Washington . She lives and works in Los Angeles . During the past decade, she has created installations for various group and solo exhibitions across the United States and Europe including the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and the Soap Factory in Minneapolis . Aschheim has received a variety of supporting grants and appointments. A curriculum vitae, examples of her work and additional information are available on the artist’s website at www.deborahaschheim.com.
The exhibition will feature a catalog with an essay by Meg Linton, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the Otis College of Art And Design in Los Angeles . A collaborative lecture with Washington University ’s Department of Psychology’s Dynamic Cognition Laboratory is being planned as a mid-exhibition event.
Deborah Aschheim’s exhibition opens Saturday, February 9, 2008 with a public reception from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. and continues through May 11, 2008.
