Local gallery debuts acclaimed artist’s one-woman show

Galerie Maximillian, one of Aspen’s oldest local galleries, is kicking off Art Week with internationally acclaimed British artist Clare Woods’ one-woman show.

The show, titled “Lines and Locating,” will have its opening event Thursday, July 24, from 6 to 8 p.m., and run through Aug. 17.

Woods is not a stranger to Galerie Maximillian, which has exhibited Woods’ work over the past three years. This will be the gallery’s first one-woman exhibition of her work, though, according to a press release. Woods has also exhibited works in London, Copenhagen, New York, and Los Angeles, in addition to art fairs including Art Basel, Frieze, The Armory, and others.

“Woods utilizes the genre of still life and the classical trope of memento mori to explore the vulnerability of life, its fragile boundaries, and co-existing tensions,” the press release states.

Woods’ new collages and prints depict cut flowers, sky, and mountains alongside chandeliers and still life images, a departure from her earlier work exploring the human body. Wilting flowers, dipping stems, and curling leaves are notable in Woods’ new work, exploring “the ambiguous threat of every-day life, mediating between moments of beauty and mortality.”

“Hovering between figuration and abstraction, the works in ‘Lines and Locating’ present us with both the familiar and the uncanny, the gentle and the sinister,” according to the press release.

Woods’ process is uniquely her own, incorporating a number of different steps.

“This exploration of the screen printing, monoprinting, and collage processes has afforded me the opportunity to deconstruct, reimagine, and reassemble imagery in a completely new way,” Woods said in the release. “While adhering to the composition and color palette of recent paintings, I have relished being able to occupy a compelling space between paint and print.”

Woods describes her element of screen printing as “controlled chance.”

“Happy accidents and a loss of control arising from the various mechanical printing processes contribute to the physical breakdown of the image and allow for a deceleration and fragmentation of the subject,” the press release states.

The gallery is open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, or by appointment.