Lauren Kalman


Lauren Kalman is a contemporary American visual artist who uses photography, sculpture, jewelry, craft objects, performance, and installation. Kalman’s works investigate ideas of beauty, body image, and consumer culture. Kalman has taught at institutions including Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently she is an Associate Professor at Wayne State University.

Early life and education

Kalman was born and raised in the Midwest. Her father is an industrial designer and her mother was a commercial photographer who have no doubt influenced Kalman's approach to her art. Kalman attended the Massachusetts College of Art where she majored in jewelry and metalsmithing. After, she apprenticed at the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture where she was trained in foundry with a focus on metal chasing and welding. Later, Kalman earned a MFA in art and technology from Ohio State University where she focused on art and technology which is obviously integrated in her interdisciplinary work. Kalman currently teaches at Wayne State University and works in her studio in Detroit, MI.

Exhibitions

''But if the Crime is Beautiful''.... (2013-2015)

But if the Crime is Beautiful… is a series found objects and fabric adorning a woman’s body to create sculptural compositions, which were photographed and displayed along with the objects themselves. The series is named after Adolf Loos' 1910 lecture series Ornament and Crime, in which he equated ornamentation with the destruction of culture and society, and argued that only criminals and degenerates adorn themselves. Adolf Loos' writings were highly influential in the Modern Architecture movement and the Bauhaus. In But if the Crime is Beautiful… Kalman points out and challenges these historical discourses, which have simultaneously served to paint the female sexuality as deviant, within the field of modernism. But if the Crime is Beautiful… was exhibited in the Sienna Patti Gallery in Lennox, MA from February 8 through April 6, 2014.

Collections

Kalman's work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Detroit Institute of Art, and The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, amongst others.