Liz Scheer

Galerie Shibumi is pleased to announce the gallery's representation of painter Liz Scheer (b. Texas, 1990).

Buddhist teacher Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche has said that a knife becomes sharp as the result of "two exhaustions"--the exhaustion of the sharpening stone and the exhaustion of the metal. In the same way, he continues, "enlightenment is the result of the exhaustion of obscurations and the exhaustion of the antidote of obscurations." Liz Scheer sharpens the knife of her 'painting-poems' by rubbing together two disparate narratives (one visual and one verbal) that have respectively 'maxed out' their claims to reality. By pairing small jewel-toned paintings with patches of fiction pulled from a nonexistent ur-text, Scheer's work portrays the unexpected clarity that arises in moments of spiritual depletion. Through its uncanny iconography born from New Age paraphernalia and the culture of New England and the Midwest, Scheer's work portrays a kind of quotidian transcendence suffused with poignancy and humor.

Artist Talk with Liz Scheer and Meghan O'Gieblyn

Enjoy a conversation with painter, Liz Scheer and writer Meghan O'Gieblyn! Meghan O'Gieblyn is the author of God Human Animal Machine and Interior States, which won the 2018 Believer Book Award for nonfiction. She writes essays and criticism for Harper's, The New Yorker, WIRED, Bookforum, n+1, The New York Review of Books, and other publications, and is the recipient of the 2023 Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Full Artist Talk

The talent

Liz Scheer

Liz Scheer

Artist Talk with Liz Scheer and Meghan O'Gieblyn

The talent

She wasn't afraid I'd leave. She was afraid I would come back

Let me tell you about a planet devoted to travel

You could fit three of me in them

'You can keep running, ' said the priest, 'but my eye is like the eye of the fly, reflecting 4,000 images of you.'

I imagine he meant to disturb me. But I am no flower.

Socratic Dialogue

How is a condemned person supposed to behave?

The priest waved its hands in a gesture of permission…

Pink Shrine

'I'm a nurse,' she said. 'My patient is time.'

What had changed were their beliefs (a spoon bends, or doesn't).

Then it said: 'I'm out of this world. Deal with it. Once every four days, you'll be seeing me.'

Ranch House

We thought you were an angel, but you're just a glutton with wings.

Joke ('But I can't get on your couch, doctor. I'm a dog')

You keep falling in and out of your own name like a star fixed to twinkle realistically on the ceiling of a ventilated theater

There is a slight shamanistic edge to what we do here at the agency.

They would be 43 years old when it happened on earth.

Sense of an ending

A slinky? I did not understand this woman at all.

At the time I couldn't even think these things in an honest way

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes

They had to fight it all the way (the way to where?)

It is my duty to point out the pattern, even if there is no pattern at all.

The Headpiece

God Communicating Through the Weather

Not in that commonwealth. Not in that precinct. Not on the floor of that kitchen in that home on that fake street in that made-up town with no name

A Day Passes

His roommate or girlfriend told us we could not stay. “You are grown men,” she said. “It doesn't look right.”

Sunglasses worn by Moses for roughly half an hour in front of the burning bush.

I hated my boyfriend but liked the neighborhood

Yes, I'd stab them,' said the priest. 'Thank you. I'd stab the Victim and the Prostitute and the Advocate and the Angel…

Dreamt I saw a circus tent cut in the shape of continents and not one of them was home, my dear not one of them was home

She wasn't a poet. She was a poem.

Guru's Gift (The deeper the loneliness, the deeper the love)

Prayer puzzle

One told the other: ‘She is normal. She is normal. Nothing happens to her.’

They wanted to know if I had eaten in the past fourteen hours; I had

I had one night of fun,' said the ant. 'Now I'll spend the rest of my life digging this grave.

For some, it was a nuisance. For others, a real reprieve, a rewinding

Sad? Which story is sad? The one that I'm telling you, or the one that you're hearing?

Tell me who I am, really…

If we swapped places, it would make no difference (A shadow of myself, made by myself).

Even so, there was a grandeur in it.

On All Fours (Locked in but Free to Change)

zoo

Dishonesty about one thing obfuscates other truths

The priest rolled its eyes. “Fear is a note, not a chord. Who's going to love you enough to make you brave?’

The Task

Options in Community Living

Wasn't jealousy another word for possession?

Pioneer (I wouldn't say I believed, but maybe I didn't disbelieve, either. My beliefs were troubled).

Dear Diary, Where do I find these violent, pleasant people? They show me the only thing worth fighting for, or almost the only thing. Signed, The little red berry

She could see years into the future

Location

July Hours

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