Nancy Lorenz: Moon Gold is 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.

Elsewhere, corrugated cardboard is transformed into a ground for gilding. Abstract scratches and striations coalesce into a landscape composition, an evocation of sea, sky, and slanting rain. This motif, studied from nature in the artist’s sketchbooks, remains a recurring theme in paintings large and small, and in the panels that together form folding screens.

Support for the exhibition is provided by Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo and The Dorothea Leonhardt Fund at the Communities Foundation of Texas, Inc., and the members of The San Diego Museum of Art and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Program. Institutional support for the Museum is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.

Featured (top to bottom):  Nancy Lorenz, Red Gold Pour Box, 2017. Red gold leaf, gesso, pigment on paulownia box. 11 x 12 x 6 1/2 in. | Nancy Lorenz, Lemon Gold Sunlight with Rain, 2017. Lemon gold leaf, clay, cardboard on wood panel. 102 x 72 x 11 1/2 in.