About Edward Lentsch
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
Edward Lentsch’s expansive artistic practice explores his relationship between the self, nature and the universe. From the Fibonacci sequence to the teachings of Aristotle, Lentsch attempts to create a bridge between the natural world and these intellectual canons, exploring the interconnection between the realms of science and mysticism, the metaphysical and the spiritual. He explores how these three facets are integrated within a global environment and moreover how we, as humans, fit within this complex matrix of thought using the ideas of some of the world’s greatest writers and scholars.
Lentsch works across a variety of media to create an ‘energy of intention’, in which textures, compositions and colours (or their absence) are combined. At first glance, his abstract canvases bring to mind the earthen tones of Kiefer, or the scratched surfaces of Tàpies. Lentsch, however, draws from a broader art historical canon, and painting becomes an extension of the life force around him, a transformative experience through which he can mediate a pure experiential moment. Flowing from a nonverbal intuitive state of creative expression, Lentsch bridges a complex visual language in which colours and textures are lifted from the natural world. On canvas, they are refracted and tessellated, at times put through the process of entropy, which allows for them to be transformed and transmuted.
Lentsch starts with a mastic and polymer foundation, before working with stone powders and dry pigments. Here, while the work is still wet, he uses trowels and sticks creating visual interventions. Before encapsulating the work in shellac and various varnishes, each works’ effervescence is enhanced and its distressed surface is developed. Works take on qualities of organic surfaces, such as sandstone or granite, using an intricate network of flecks and dots of pigment to proliferate the densely worked surface. One can imagine soft, snowy landscapes of white and grey or the verdant green of a tranquil overgrown pond or even the harsh dark lines of barren twigs and brush against an autumn landscape. Lentsch’s technique allows for the translation of our natural landscapes into abstract environments.
It is the complex relationship between what is known, or the skill and technique, and what is manifested, the interpretation or intuition, that lies at the heart of Lentsch’s painterly technique. He uses the force of the paint as it is applied to the canvas as a sensory way to connect with the energy of the life force around him. Lentsch’s paintings also use logic existing within nature; for example, the number sequences that comprise the fractals of a snowflake. This ontological approach is spurred by the artist’s interest in Synectics, a methodology that seeks to explore how creativity works by a connecting of dots to reach a higher plane of understanding that encompasses the physical, psychological and symbolic. In this way Lentsch explores links between elemental phenomena and more ethereal, spiritual and magical experiences.
Each of Lentsch’s works refers to a particular theory or intellectual or spiritual manifesto. His titles are not intended to act as complete narratives for individual paintings, but rather to demonstrate their significance as a theoretical foundation where each piece is connected to the other. His work becomes a series of links within a chain creating an intuitive dialogue between the conscious and subconscious. Just as his paintings make connections between the natural world and abstraction, it is the force of painting that helps him complete the circle. In diving into the canvas Lentsch understands his connection to the beauty and complexity of life that allow him to find freedom and personal empowerment.
LONDON 2014
WRITTEN BY ANNA WALLACE-THOMPSON
GALLERIE KASHYA HILDEBRAND
22 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8DE, United Kingdom
EXHIBITIONS (partial list)
International Art Fair Exhibitions
2019 LA Art Show Los Angeles
2018 Art Market Hamptons
2016-17 Palm Springs Fine Art Fair
2015-17 Dallas Art Fair
2015 Scope Miami
2015 SCAPE Corona Del Mar/Newport Beach, CA
2015 Dallas Fine Art Fair
2014 Abu Dhabi Int’l Fine Art Fair
2014 KFIAF Seoul South Korea
2013 Costello Childs Scottsdale
2012-14 Art Aspen
2012 Art San Diego
2012 Palm Springs International Art Fair
2012 Art Hamptons
2011 Art San Diego
2011 San Francisco Fine Art Fair
2010 Art Hamptons
2005 Art Chicago Navy Pier, Chicago, IL
2003 Art Chicago, Julie Baker Fine Art, Grass Valley, CA
2002 Palm Springs International Art Fair, Palm Springs, CA
2000 Palm Springs International Art Fair, Palm Springs, CA
Gallery Exhibitions
2015-17 Costello Childs, Scottsdale
2015 Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert
2015 Turner Carroll Gallery, Sante Fe
2015 Kashya Hildebrand Gallerie, London
2015 S.C.A.P.E (Southern California Artist Projects and Exhibitions, Newport Beach, CA
2014 Lanoue Fine Art, Boston
2013 Peter Marcelle Gallery, Bridgehampton
2011-12 Costello Childs Scottsdale 2016 Solo Exhibition New River Fine Art Ft Lauderdale
2010 Tobi Tobin, Los Angeles
2010 The Edge, Santa Fe
2010 Costello Childs Gallery Scottsdale
2010 Budwell Middle East Muscat, Oman
2010 “Paradigms and Paradoxes” Forré and Co. Aspen, CO
2009 “The Iridescence of Lepodoptera” Lanoue Fine Art, Boston
2009 “The Alchemist” Ogilvie Pertl Gallery, Chicago, IL
2009 Madison Gallery, La Jolla, CA
2009 Zane Bennett, Santa Fe, NM
2009 Zane Bennett, Art Chicago
2008 Gallery Moda, Santa Fe, NM
2008-09 Onessimo Fine Art
2008 Ogilvie Pertle Gallery, Chicago, IL
2007-2008 “Return to the Source OK Harris Works of Art, New York, NY”
OK Harris Works of Art, New York, NY
2007 “Lesson’s From the I Ching” Onessimo Fine Art, Palm Beach Gardens, FL
2007 “Remembering Atlantis” Eleonore Austerer Gallery, Palm
Desert, CA
2007 Hernandez Contemporary, Scottsdale, AZ
2007 Ogilvie/Pertl Gallery, Chicago, IL
2007 Gallery Moda, Santa Fe, NM
2006 “The Saffron Adhara” Lanoue Fine Art, Boston, MA
2006 “Modern Masters, Santa Fe, NM
2006 Hernandez Contemporary, Scottsdale, AZ
2006 Modern Masters Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA
2005 Flanders Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
2004 Elizabeth Edwards Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA
2004 Flanders Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
MEDIA AND PUBLICATIONS
2014 Cover Luxe Magazine Southern California
2013 Harpers Bazaar Magazine Japan
2013-2014 TV show Million Dollar Listing
2010 Music Video recording artist Enrique Iglesias “I Like It”
2010 Music Video recording artist Ne-Yo “Champaign Life”
2012 Elle Décor Magazine
2011 Angelino Magazine LA
2010 LA Times
2010 Palm Springs Life
2007 Art in America
2006 Palm Springs Life
ART DONATIONS FOR FUNDRAISING
Giving Back Fund
MOCA
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
William Shatner’s Hollywood Charity Auction
Big Brothers and Sisters of America
American Cancer Society
Perspectives
Greater Minneapolis Crisis Center Nursery
Hess Center for Science and Medicine Mount Sinai NYC
Minneapolis Heart Foundation
Free Arts
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(612) 205-1049
studio(at)edwardlentsch.com
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