New York

BIOGRAPHY

Laura Splan is a New York based mixed media artist. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of California, Irvine where she originally studied Biological Sciences. She received her Master of Fine Art in Sculpture from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Her conceptually driven work employs a variety of materials and processes that usually have a feminine sensibility about them. Unsettling scientific and medical imagery are foiled by more comfortable domestic imagery and craft processes. Likewise, the seemingly familiar and benign are subverted by the anatomical and biological. She often uses her own body in the production of materials for her work such as blood and discarded facial peel. She recently became a certified phlebotomist.

I am concerned with 'what is at stake' in a given public space, finding connections between subjectivity and the collective, micro-politics and macro-politics. My projects deal with breaking borders and boundaries, visualizing hidden power structures, and the relationships between openness and control. Trying to define a moment where something is put in motion, opens up and touches deep down.

As a visual artist and curator working in NYC, my work examines communication technology and our perceptions of it. I studied at the University of Washington in Seattle and graduated from Rutgers University in 1986. In 2008 I received a Mid Atlantic Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Painting and was awarded a digital residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts. I have exhibited in numerous venues including two solo exhibitions in NYC. My work is in several collections including the West/SAI, AG Rosen and the Sprint Art Collection. Reviews include the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Frieze, among others. My work is published in several exhibition book/catalogues and discussed and featured on the cover of The UFO Show, University of Illinois Art Museum Press.