"Nancy Lorenz draws inspiration for her art from many sources — from the traditional gilt artists of Italy and the 1960s Italian arte povera movement to American painter James McNeill Whistler. But it was the five years she spent in Japan as a teenager that is her biggest influence.

Her distinctive East-meets-West style is characterized by the use of gold and silver leaf, lacquer and mother-of-pearl inlay. Lorenz describes her work, which ranges in scale from room-sized panels to small boxes, as 'kind of a combination of abstract expressionism along with Japanese techniques.' The result is a visual feast of rich metallics often set against utilitarian materials such as cardboard and burlap.

'It is tremendously sensual art, both in so far as the forms themselves can be very gestural and sinuous and recalling natural forms, but also her use of materials is very unusual. I’ve never seen work quite like it — the way she combines lacquers and gilding work and inlay. Many of these techniques are quite traditional but she uses them in fairly unconventional ways,' said Ariel Plotek, curator of modern and contemporary art the San Diego Museum of Art."

"Nancy Lorenz: Moon Gold will be the first major solo museum exhibition to showcase the art and alchemy of New York-based Nancy Lorenz. Having trained in the conservation of Japanese decorative arts, Lorenz continues to employ traditional lacquering and gilding techniques as points of departure in her studio practice. This collaboration with the Museum will feature new works by the artist inspired by Japanese masterpieces from the permanent collection and will be accompanied by a catalogue published by the Museum.

Among the painted works in the exhibition will be what Lorenz calls Pours, abstract compositions involving gestural applications of water-gilded gesso. Varying in scale, these paintings turn on the tension between arid fields of pigment and sumptuous cascades of gold, silver, and platinum. More intimate, though no less beguiling, will be a group of decadently adorned boxes."

From the exhibition press release: "'Bedazzled' implies amazement, to be overwhelmed to the point of confusion; going beyond our senses and reason. This lush exhibition of 43 artists includes work that seduces with glitz and glamour, and allures with a sense of magic and mystery. The exhibition presents a broad range of media—painting, installation, sculpture, printmaking, and digital media—that entice the viewer, while blurring the boundaries between the aesthetic experience and enchantment... The exhibition highlights optics, ornament, surfaces, light, mirroring, pattern, repetition, abstraction, and geometry." 

The artists represented in the exhibition are themselves a bedazzling array of famous names, mid-career artists and freshly emerging local talents, whose colorful and provocative works play with and illuminate each other. The artists in the exhibition are: El Anatsui, Radcliffe Bailey, Nancy Blum, Paul Corio, Katherine Daniels, Evie Falci, Vibha Galhotra, Ori Gersht, Damien Hirst, Jessica Johnson, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, James Lecce, Chris Leidy, Crystal Liu, Nancy Lorenz, Liza Lou, Susie MacMurray, Armando Marino, Sasha Meret, Betriz Milhazes, Marilyn Minter, Melissa “MRS” Castignoli, Paula Nadelstern, Eva Obodo, Caitlin Peluffo, Rubem Robierb, Carlos Rolón/Dzine, James Rosenquist, Michelle Sakhai, Nancy Saleme, Holly Sears, David Shaw, Devan Shimoyama, Rachel Stern, Megan Suttles, Barbara Takenaga, Mickalene Thomas, Federico Uribe, Paul Villinski, Stephen Westfall, Saya Woolfalk, and Robert Zakanitch.

Curated by Bartholomew F. Bland. Opening reception Wednesday, October 5, 2016, from 6:00 - 8:00pm. 

Beauty Reigns features the work of 13 emerging and mid-career abstract painters, working in studios across the United States. The exhibition celebrates the exoticism, exuberance and optimism found in the artists’ work. Among the characteristics these artists share are high-key color, layered surface imagery, use of overall and repeated patterns, stylized motifs and a tension between melancholy and the sublime.

Beauty Reigns, which is organized by Rene Paul Barilleaux for the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, features works by artists both national and international perspectives. With the exception of Beatriz Milhazes, who lives in Brazil, the artists—who span two generations—work in communities across the United States. They span two generations and several include elements of visual vocabularies they were introduced to in other countries in their distinctive canvases.

June 11 - August 17, 2014

"Beauty Reigns: A Baroque Sensibility in Recent Painting", organized by René Paul Barilleaux, the McNay Art Museum's Chief Curator/Curator of Art after 1945, assembles the work of thirteen emerging and mid-career abstract painters whose art is characterized in whole or part by high-key color, obsessive layering of surface imagery, use of overall and repeated patterns, stylized motifs, fragments of representation, and a tension between melancholy and the sublime. . ."

March 8 - July 6, 2014

The first garden was Eden - a setting of flowers and plants for the creation of our world and mankind. Ever since, we have cultivated gardens simply for their beauty or for the sustenance they provide as food. Flowers have served as inspiration for painters and poets from time immemorial. From the mundane to the exquisite, flowers enhance every facet of our lives. Their physical expression may be found in gardens and outdoor parties of every kind, from the humblest to the most elegant 18th-century fête champêtre.

Garden Party is on view from March 8, 2014 to July 6, 2014. The exhibition is organized by guest curators Franklin Hill Perrell, the museum’s former senior curator, and JoAnne Olian, curator emeritus at the Museum of the City of New York. Garden Party explores the imagery of outdoor entertainments and garden parties through paintings, sculpture, costume, fabrics and decorative arts and designs.