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Marie Lorenz

For her show at TMG Lorenz lays the present day Kern River over the artifact of its pre-industrial form. An excursion undertaken down a portion of the river- around the landmass once known as Kern Island- bring Lorenz and her crew through the architectonic channels that’s constrain, functionalize and finally erase the Kern. From the place in which it emerges from the mountains and enters present day Bakersfield, through the oil refineries, along parks and flood control basins, and out into the fields the fractured body of water becomes a kind of parallel language running aside the now vacant river bed. 

A multi channel video follows a group of CSUB students led by Lorenz as they trace the divergent paths of the river that break away, rejoin and dissipate. A narrative of the student’s thoughts and observations as they travel their routes includes anecdotal histories of the central valley and the fleeting observations and conjectures that emerge from travel. 

Along side the video Lorenz presents ceramic forms cast from detritus gathered from the Kern. Reproduced in multiples the ceramics are a forced fossil record of the plastic bits and pieces amassing along the shore and the dry beds of the Kern that threaten to outlast the river itself.



Marie Lorenz was born in Twentynine Palms, California, received a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design, and an M.F.A. from Yale. Lorenz has received grants from Artists Space, the Harpo Foundation, and the Alice Kimball English Travel Fellowship. In 2008 she was awarded the Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize for the American Academy in Rome. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, from High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree, California, to MoMA PS1, in New York City.  She has completed solo projects at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England, Artpace in San Antonio, Texas, and at Jack Hanley Gallery in New York. Her ongoing project ‘The Tide and Current Taxi’ is an exploration of the coastline in New York City.