Fran Siegel "Infrastructure"

"Infrastructure," Los Angeles based artist Fran Siegel’s solo exhibition of collaged drawings and wall sculptures, encapsulates the shifting dynamics of global migration. Taking cues from Calder’s circus and Fellini’s “La Strada,” this latest body of work fuses vast urban plans with the microcosm of a traveling circus to highlight this pivotal issue. Siegel’s itinerant circus travels from town to town, pitching its temporary tent. Her Infrastructure is unstable, off-kilter and crumbling: power lines, transmitters, and structural rigs appear skeletal and transitory. Shifting perspectives generate a sense of motion and time throughout the exhibition. Viewpoints are pieced together: up, down, fractured, cut, and layered. Images are piled from ground to sky: a paper-thin stone fence hovers near the floor, light-filled paper mâché sculptures bulge from the wall, and cloud formations depict fleeting moments above.

Two new Overland drawings--large scale floor to ceiling collages, constructed from multiple aerial views—are included in the show. Recent monumental works from this series have been acquired by LACMA, MOCA L.A., and the Yale Art Gallery.

In 2015/16 Siegel was honored with a Fulbright award to Brazil, where she has been researching the ancestral Bahian landscape of the African diaspora for an upcoming show at The UCLA Fowler Museum. Several key drawings for this exhibition were made at Instituto Sacatar on the Brazilian island of Itaparica. Fellowships at the Bogliasco Foundation and Siena Art Institute In Italy, CCA Andratx in Spain, and her work with US Art and Embassies in Ecuador, have contributed to her process of in-depth global research that continually informs her work.

Siegel received a Getty Grant from the California Community Foundation, the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship, and the OC Contemporary Collectors Grant. She earned her M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art, and B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art. She is currently a professor in the School of Art at California State University, Long Beach.

Siegel represented the United States in the IX International Bienal of Cuenca, Ecuador. Other site-specific exhibits include the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, Poland, and Nuova Icona in Venice, Italy. Her work was included in “Slash” at the Museum of Art and Design in NY, and exhibitions at ACME, LA Louver, and Roberts and Tilton in Los Angeles. Siegel’s solo drawing project at The Art, Design and Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara last year was the subject of a feature article in X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly. The Los Angeles Times recently published an artist profile about Siegel’s creative process. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, ArtCritical, ARTnews, Asian Art News, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Art New England, ArtWeek, LA Weekly, Arts, and Sculpture. This is Siegel’s second solo exhibition with Lesley Heller Workspace.

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