Karen Lederer received her BFA in Printmaking and Drawing from Washington University in St. Louis in 2008 and an MFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. She has been an artist in residence at Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Lower East Side Printshop, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. Lederer has presented her work in solo exhibitions at Morgan Lehman Gallery, Cheymore Gallery, One River School, Guilford College Art Gallery, Tennis Elbow at The Journal Gallery, Grant Wahlquist Gallery, and Field Projects. She has participated in many group exhibitions, most recently at Morgan Lehman Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, Dinner Gallery, Cristea Roberts Gallery, and Hashimoto Contemporary.
Artist Statement:
Karen Lederer’s colorful paintings and monoprints invite the viewer into the intimate space of the home. One sees hints of the outside through windows, but here nature exists tamed in vases or represented in patterns on wallpaper and clothing. Her work highlights her diverse artistic influences from Henri Matisse to Josef Frank and everyday objects like Zabars mugs and figurines from the MET gift shop familiar to the born-and-raised New Yorker. Trained to be a printmaker, Karen Lederer brings monoprinting techniques into a contemporary painting practice. She offsets inked plates onto the surface of her artwork and then defines the rest of the image with paint and drawing materials. Both flat and rendered, the work conveys a spatial disorientation that denies stability. By mixing diverse processes in each piece, she creates environments that are at once constructed and artificial, yet private and personal. In a moment where people live simultaneously in the physical world and online, her paintings evoke the strange filter through which we see much of our reality.