Scientific Purposes (In which a murderous hairdresser donates his head to science, with one restriction): Paintings by Anna Schuleit Haber

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present Scientific Purposes (In which a murderous hairdresser donates his head to science, with one restriction), a solo exhibition of paintings by Anna Schuleit Haber. This show consists of ten abstract paintings on paper and linen that have been several years in the making. The seven works on paper are part of an ongoing series of 104 paintings called The Voice Imitator, which won a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) grant in 2013. The series is inspired by a collection of short fiction by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. The larger paintings on linen preserve that same feeling of abstracted storytelling, although they further resist any definition, especially considering their size.  

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Anna Schuleit Haber studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, creative writing/book arts at Dartmouth College, and was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard. Her works have ranged from museum installations made with paint, to large-scale projects in forests, on uninhabited islands, and in psychiatric institutions, using extensive sound systems, live sod, thousands of flowers, mirrors, antique telephones, bodies of water, and neuroscience technologies. She was named a MacArthur Fellow for work that has “conceptual clarity, compassion, and beauty.”

Schuleit Haber has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Bogliasco, Blue Mountain Center, The Hermitage, Yaddo, Banff, and a visiting artist/guest lecturer at Brown University, MIT, Smith College, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, The New School, Brandeis, University of Michigan, McGill, RISD, Boston University, Pratt, Bowdoin, and Syracuse University. Her writings have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, the Massachusetts Review, Agni, and in Urban Infill, the journal of the Cleveland Urban Design Center. She was recently embedded in a small-town newsroom where she staged a serial 'take-over' of 26 front pages in collaboration with typographers from around the world, poets, writers, journalists, local citizens and students. Upcoming projects revolve around seriality and memory, and include commissions in the city of Copenhagen (DK) and other architectural settings in the U.S. Her works are included in private collections in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia, as well as in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. She is based in New Orleans and New Hampshire.