Lorenz-Countermark — ARIEL PLOTEK ART CONSULTING

Nancy Lorenz is a New York-based artist who makes objects of incandescent beauty. Her practice deconstructs modernist methods and transforms traditional materials.

Palladium Cloud with Iron, 2024, palladium leaf, iron fillings, jute, and pigment on wood panel, 20 x 15 in.

As a painter, Nancy Lorenz has explored the material languages of embellishment, from gold-ground panel painting to coromandel lacquer. Deconstructing techniques traditionally used in the West to frame and adorn works of art, Lorenz has dispensed with borders and boundaries, making gilding and inlay the substance of her practice. Indeed, her most gestural paintings often overrun the edges of their panels and stretchers.

Another part of Lorenz’s practice unfolds on paper: the studies and preparatory sketches that precede the paintings. Seldom seen, these works are archived in portfolios. It is this archive that Lorenz has drawn on for the present exhibition, selecting drawings and paintings on paper as the point of departure for a new body of work. Here, she engages with the frame as never before, enclosing each sketch within an artist-made setting in dialogue with the work on paper.

Rain, 2025, gold leaf, mother of pearl inlay, on wood panel, 24.5 x 18.5 in.

While Lorenz’s large-scale works have at times been “framed” architecturally, conceived in relation to a particular scheme, the proposed project takes an altogether different approach. Rather than extending the modernist impulse to collapse the distinction between artwork and setting, it looks back to the elaborate inventions of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, when gilded and inlaid frames were inseparable from the images they contained.

The exhibition’s title, Countermark, draws on historical numismatics, where the term describes a mark stamped onto an existing coin, adding a new layer of meaning without erasing its original identity. Lorenz’s frames similarly offer a second register of material and meaning, neither simply containing nor adorning the works on paper, but entering into a dialogue with objects that are already complete in themselves.

Palladium Iron, 2024, palladium leaf, iron, on wood panel, 24 x 18 in.

Checklist

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Recent Work

Honey (After Ruche d’Abeille by Sheila Hicks), 2022

Nancy Lorenz

American b. 1962

Nancy Lorenz is a visual artist and John Simon Guggenheim Fellow who lives and works in New York City. She earned her BFA in Painting and Printmaking at the University of Michigan and her MFA in Painting at the Tyler School of Art. Her work has been exhibited at numerous museums and galleries, including a mid-career retrospective at the San Diego Museum of Art in 2018. Lorenz’s most recent exhibitions were at ADAA The Art Show (New York), Gavlak Gallery (Palm Beach), PDX Contemporary Art (Portland), and a 2023 site-specific installation at Chiesa degli Artisti (The Church of the Artists) in Rome. She frequently collaborates with leading international architects and designers including William Georgis, Peter Marino, Michael Smith, and William Sofield. Lorenz’s work can be seen in public spaces around the world—including Chanel, Dior, and Tiffany’s stores—as well as in numerous private collections. An upcoming exhibition at the Taubman Art Museum in 2027 will feature the artist’s ongoing exploration of the periodic table of elements.