A Number of Tragedies

Laumeier Sculpture Park’s 2023 Visiting Artists in Residence are Pittsburgh-based artists Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis. This collaborative duo utilizes innovative approaches to conceptualism and minimalism to realize their work in sculpture, performance and multimedia installation.

With playfulness and humor, they explore interconnectivity and tension within the human-nature relationship, often with a focus on the balance between the individual and the collective.

For Laumeier Sculpture Park, they will create a new work titled A Number of Tragedies (working title), a series of aluminum, kite-shaped sculptures embedded into a grove of trees in the sculpture park’s Way Field, on view from Aug. 26 to Dec. 17.

Kites are objects of creative play and wonder, a type of kinetic sculpture that ties the user directly to nature. Clayton and Lewis’ colorful, sculptural kites, while “stuck” in the trees, still suggest the remnants of a collective, celebratory event. The tangled web of color, shape and string imparts a sense of humor central to their practice and expresses the amusement, creativity and intersection between us and the natural world.

During their residency, Clayton and Lewis will develop several programs inspired by their installation, including a collaborative kite fly open to all park visitors during Discover Laumeier.

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