I Will Destroy You - Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / I Will Destroy You. 10.21.23 A solo exhibition of works by Lilly McElroy

LOREM IPSUM

i

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

STUDIOS INC

Studios Inc provides studio space, professional development, networking, and exhibitions for mid-career artists in Greater Kansas City. We engage the Kansas City community through our Exhibition Series Program, which exhibits resident artist works throughout the year, free to the public.

Lilly McElroy

Launched in 2003 to serve mid-career artists, Studios Inc is Kansas City’s nonprofit arts organization that offers pivotal three-year residencies to mid-career artists who are poised to significantly expand their careers in accordance with the career goals articulated in their residency application. Its competitive application process, sharp focus on career advancement, and commitment to serve the under-served population of mid-career artists set Studios Inc apart from other artist-support organizations.

Studios Inc offers a unique immersion experience for resident artists, who use their studio and exhibition space to produce and exhibit work, network and learn from one another, and attract and cultivate relationships with art patrons, collectors, and arts professionals.

01

02

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

03

09.08.23 / 10.21.23 Lilly McElroy

I Will Destroy You.

A solo exhibition of works by Lilly McElroy

04

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

05

09.08.23 / 10.21.23 Lilly McElroy 06

I will destroy you.

It’s natural to make photographs while you wait for the inevitable. Photography captures light and freezes time. It is an attempt to preserve the fleeting.

For this exhibition photographs of the setting sun were made by McElroy using a 4 x 5 film camera. She then irrevocably altered the negatives, using her fingernail to scratch away the image of the sun. This action is small yet devastating; the anxious picking at a scab that leaves you with a lifelong scar. The sun, the very thing whose light makes the photograph possible, has been gouged out of the negative, the printed picture rendering this absence not as erasure revealing blank paper, but as the ominous birth of an angry black void. McElroy’s hand is directly linked to this destruction as the sun becomes a meteor, dark and crackling in the sky, a malevolent yellow nimbus dancing around it as it hurtles toward the surface of the earth, toward you.

STUDIOS INC Lilly McElroy

In her monolithic works the sun is a dark orb that hovers over a bucolic field. It no longer emits energy or light; it only absorbs and you are standing in front of it. The innate silence of the photograph now presses down on the landscape. The rustling of the grass in the wind, the susurration of the insects in the field are cut off, and you can only hear the sounds of your own breath. McElroy made these images in the darkroom, laying negatives directly on top of light sensitive paper. With the press of a button, light flashed through the negative and struck the paper, chemically altering its structure. This transformation signals a shift, an irrevocable change, a violence that has been enacted and can’t be taken back.”

07

08

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

09

10

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

11

12

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

13

14

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

15

16

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC Lilly McElroy

You are standing in a landscape.

Maybe it is a pasture, or maybe it is the lakeshore on a summer evening, or maybe it is the top of a mountain, the wilderness past the end of the trail, but whatever this place is, in this moment, it feels safe. It feels stable. Then it doesn’t. All at once, there is dread and melancholy. You are here, waiting for an inevitable end. It is coming, you are grieving, but at least this place is pretty.

17

18

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

19

20

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

21

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

Lilly McElroy

Lilly McElroy

The artistic projects Lilly McElroy pursues are a reflection of her complex relationship with the American West.

They explore what it means to be an American in a time of diminished expectations. Working as a lens-based artist, she utilizes the landscape symbolically to address issues of power, gender, and eco-anxiety. She performs for the camera, enacting feminist gestures that reflect a sense of quixotic hopefulness as well as a desire for control over subjects as ungovernable as nature.

22

McElroy photographs herself attempting to grasp the sun and physically manipulates images of the landscape by scratching them until a void is generated. These actions have a direct link to her personal history: McElroy grew up in southern Arizona, immersed in vast landscapes and surrounded by cliché representations of her own experiences. There were cowboys riding bulls, coyotes howling on moonlit nights, and monumentally beautiful sunsets. She’s translated those experiences into epic photographs and playfully antagonistic videos.

STUDIOS INC Lilly McElroy

The gestures that she enacts for the camera are simultaneously loving and cruel; they are an attempt to discuss the frustration inherent in contemporary experience. McElroy makes photographs in which she confronts the American landscape and foolheartedly demands that it become aware of her presence. She makes videos in which she breaks through images and leaves the viewer to contemplate traces of representation. She transforms photographic materials through the act of touch. The photographs, installations, performances, and videos that she produces acknowledge the possibility of failure, that she will go unnoticed, and that she won’t affect any change.

It is through these projects that she attempts to contend with the inevitable and express the need for agency.

McElroy becomes a sympathetic hero and a stand-in for the viewer as she faces the sublime and calls its power into question.

23

24

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

25

26

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

27

28

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

29

30

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

31

32

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

STUDIOS INC

Lilly McElroy

33

34

Lilly McElroy

09.08.23 / 10.21.23

p.09 (top right) I Will Destroy You (44.821832333827004, -69.74967994593091) Archival Inkjet Print of Hand Altered Negative 40 x 50 inches Edition of 4 $4,000

p.27 Monolith, Two Unique Gelatin Silver Contact Prints 60 x 24 inches $4,500 Price Upon Request

p.10 I Will Destroy You (44.81613720891023, -69.74691336159688) Archival Inkjet Print of Hand Altered Negative 40 x 50 inches Edition of 4 $4,000

p.28-33 (left) This is the Result, One Gelatin Silver Contact Print of torn 4x5 Negative 20 x 24 inches Edition of 5 $400 (detail photo)

p.11,12 I Will Destroy You (21.084176459575733, -157.02758455686487) Archival Inkjet Print of Hand Altered Negative 40 x 50 inches Edition of 4 $4,000

p.28-33 (middle) This is the Result, Two Gelatin Silver Contact Print of torn 4x5 Negative 20 x 24 inches Edition of 5 $400 (detail photo)

p.13 I Will Destroy You (35.31191627149544, -114.0556865556702) Archival Inkjet Print of Hand Altered Negative 40 x 50 inches Edition of 4 $4,000

p.28-33 (right) This is the Result, Three Gelatin Silver Contact Print of torn 4x5 Negative 20 x 24 inches Edition of 5 $400 (detail photo)

p.18-21 The Monolith Grid of Gelatin Silver Contact Prints 10 x 14 feet Price Upon Request

p.34, COVER The Sun in my Hand, 1 Video Loop NFS

p.25 I Will Destroy You (44.352918137820176, -68.22493197991356) Archival Inkjet Print of Hand Altered Negative 40 x 50 inches Edition of 4 $4,000

p.34, COVER The Sun in my Hand, 2 Video Loop NFS

Lilly McElroy

p.26 Monolith, One Unique Gelatin Silver Contact Prints 60 x 24 inches $4,500 Price Upon Request

INDEX OF ARTWORKS

p.04,09 I Will Destroy You (21.05774620135531, -156.84064531628414) Archival Inkjet Print of Hand Altered Negative 40 x 50 inches Edition of 4 $4,000

35

Studios Inc’s three-year residency program provides a unique immersion experience that allows mid-career artists to use their studio space to conceptualize, produce, and exhibit their work.

With support from the Neighborhood Tourism Development Fund, Studios Inc serves the Kansas City Community and Crossroads Arts District by offering a free, open-to-the-public exhibition series throughout the year, which includes opening receptions, First Friday receptions, artist talks, regular gallery hours, as well as scheduled tours and events. It is our hope to showcase and promote high-quality, interesting artwork to both visitors and members of the Kansas City community.

Studios Inc 1708 Campbell Street Kansas City, Missouri 64108 info@thestudiosinc.org 816-702-2347 www.studiosinc.org