Lara Schnitger Features on the High Line

Thu, Apr 18 - Tue, Mar 31  2020

This spring, The High Line opens its latest exhibit inspired by painting outdoors, also known as En Plein Air. The artists in the exhibition expand well beyond the historical plein air lineage. They not only bring painting outside but imagine nature as context, subject, and collaborator. The eight featured artists approach the history, methodologies, and content of outdoor painting from a variety of perspectives. Some of the artists make work exclusively to be shown outside, while others turn nature into both the subject and the medium used to create their paintings. Still, others challenge elementary distinctions between nature and the artificial.

One of the artists featured is Lara Schnitger, whose large-scale sculpture Sister of the Road, made in fabric and aluminium, floats along her own path, unconfined by the structures around her. With her head thrown back in a moment of ecstasy, the towering figure appears worry-free, breaking loose from of the train tracks laid before her on the Northern Spur Preserve at 16th St.