Elizabeth Turk

Marble and Baja Beach Stone Four

2015

Marble & Baja Beach Stone 4
Marble and Baja beach stones

Elizabeth Turk creates works that push the limits of her chosen medium of marble with hand-carved forms that defy their materiality while speaking to larger conceptual and spiritual concerns.

"Marble & Baja Beach Stone 4" is part of Turk's 2015 series, "Tensions." In this body of work, Turk juxtaposed her signature hand-carved white and black marble sculptures with unworked “philosopher” stones and sections of a centuries-old redwood root system, creating an environment that investigates the balance—and tension—between man-made and natural, material and concept. Turk encourages us to consider how nature has shaped these materials long before the artist’s manipulation of them into new forms. When viewed as components in a complex natural system, their singular beauty and inherent mystery is revealed. Turk compels us to view works of art not only as objects to be coveted and collected, but also as expressions of the natural world and our evolving relation to it.

A recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2010), a Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Fellowship (2010), and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2011), Turk is internationally recognized for transforming her signature medium of marble into strikingly intricate objects that defy convention and challenge our preconceptions of what marble can do. Using electric grinders, dental tools, and files, Turk pushes her medium to its limit, creating in each sculpture a provocative tension between the intrinsic strength of the stone and its inherent fragility, while speaking to larger conceptual and spiritual concerns of time, matter, and space.

During the sixteen years that Turk has been represented by Hirschl & Adler Modern, the gallery has mounted four extensive solo exhibitions of her work, each accompanied by publications; as well as a solo Art Kabinett at Art Basel Miami Beach (2012), a solo presentation at Masterpiece London (2014), and a solo exhibition at The Art Show (2017). Across all of these venues, the work was met with critical and commercial success from individuals based in South America, Europe, and the U.S. Turk’s work resides in numerous prestigious private and public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the National Gallery of Art (formerly, the Corcoran Gallery of Art) and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Weatherspoon Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC; and The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC. Institutional monographic exhibitions include “Elizabeth Turk: Sentient Forms,” Laguna Art Museum, CA (2015); “Elizabeth Turk: Wings,” The Dayton Art Institute, OH (2013); and “Elizabeth Turk, The Collars: Tracings of Thought,” Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC (2004). Born in Pasadena and raised in Orange County, Elizabeth Turk (b. 1961) earned her M.F.A. at the Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.