Opening reception for “Cut Twist Bind” by Anna Lyle
April 6 @ 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm
North Floor Gallery
Come join us on Saturday, April 6 from 4-7pm for a reception celebrating the opening of Anna Lyle’s exhibit “Cut Twist Bind” in the North Floor Gallery.
About the exhibit:
Cut Twist Bind is an exhibition consisting of painting and sculptural works from 2023-2024. Metaphorical imagery of fabric interacting with unattached anatomy describes the process of deconstruction and rebuilding of thought and worldview. This tends to be a sensitive yet important topic in the Deep South. Many are raised in a society where free-thinking outside of organized religion, particularly Southern Christianity, is discouraged, sometimes even thought of as dangerous. The process of performing these mental gymnastics is confusing, and along the way reality becomes warped and twisted as one starts anew, eroding a foundation to make way for a new one. This exhibition invites viewers to visualize this idea tangibly through fabric and our physical bodies, blurring the line determining which is which.
My attention to detail and the overall compositions in my work are sourced from my bodily hyper-fixations and the ways in which I feel the inner workings of my body perform. My compositional choices ride the fine line between comfort and discomfort, using fabric as a metaphor for human anatomy, inside and out. I work with both figurative and spatial perceptions, creating ambiguity and tension between the various elements in each painting.
About the artist:
Anna Lyle (b. 1992) is an artist and painter from Birmingham, AL. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from Mississippi State University in 2015 and her Master of Fine Arts from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2023. While having a past professional life as an architectural designer, Lyle exited the architecture industry in her late 20’s to pursue a career in painting and drawing.
Anna mines conceptual inspiration on place and purpose in the world outside of experiences and memories in the Southern Baptist Christian religion in which she grew up, and in the years since leaving. Lyle has exhibited work coast-to-coast in the United States, with works in private collections in the U.S., Canada, and Germany.