Artist Statement
I am a contemporary artist dedicated to making artworks that are urgent, participatory, and unrepentantly beautiful. I make artwork that aims to challenge isolation, loneliness, and disconnection by activating color, movement, and light in large-scale immersive work. Local context and creating connections with others are embodied in my creative process. For me, color is energy, a life force and space is dialogical and dynamic. Using color, light, and movement, I create experimental, site-specific work designed to engage a visceral and emotional place for viewers.
Moving towards a more sculptural practice has deepened my investigation into space. This shift has been a challenging opportunity to examine spatial impact and the effect of color on people. For example, my recent sculptural work at Rochester Art Center and Minnesota Marine Art Museum, True/False Festival, Columbus, MO, Concordia University, and the Minneapolis St Paul International Airport have provided opportunities to explore scale, form, shape, and color in conversation with architecture.
My process and concepts are responsive to the current socio-political context. My intense exploration of abstraction through text-based marks is my urgent response to the world. My work responds to space, place, and people, reflecting my belief that art can have a commitment towards interconnection. My praxis reflects visual representation of human connection, emotive use of color and light, and inclusion and compassion. In a moment of divisiveness, racism, global pandemic, mental health crisis, I need art to show me a potential pathway forward. I seek to understand what role artists have as a catalyst for change.
I engage my viewers directly, offering moments of introspection. The installations often evolve, reflecting tangible marks of connection between viewers and the exhibition experience. For me, this is an important part of connecting physically and psychologically with the audience. My work is in dialogue with audiences in a variety of ways. In the paintings, sculptures and, and installation, the audience plays a role in the experience. The work is activated by the viewer physically as they move through the space; looking from different angles and interacting through their movement, seeing a spark of color or reflection and swaying the tyvek sculptures. I’m working with color saturated rooms, inviting viewers to engage, from casual observance to direct engagement and connection. This allows the creative process to be a part of the installation. Reciprocal exchange is an ongoing collaborative process built on respect, creativity, and equity. Much of my work has included a process of “reciprocal generosity” (Mary Jane Jacobs). Everyone can enter the room and experience it on their own terms.
I am continually pushing my practice to engage with space, place, and communities. The juxtaposition of installed, studio-developed work and immersive viewer experience, create an evolving web of connections between myself and communities. I’m expanding my investigation towards immersive installations, lumin-based paintings and sculptures endevoring to offer visitors delight, awe and moments of curiosity.
Artist Bio
Anne Labovitz lives and works in St. Paul, MN. Responding to today’s world, Labovitz makes artwork that challenges isolation, loneliness and disconnection by activating color and light in large-scale work. Local context and creating connections with others is embodied in her creative process and public interventions.
Labovitz received a BA, Art & Psychology, Minor: Art Education & Art History from Hamline University (1989) and an MFA from Transart, Plymouth University, NYC, Berlin (2017). She has an extensive exhibition resume, exhibiting both nationally and internationally. Current projects include The Nexus of Well-Being and Art at Rochester Art Center (2023), a sixteen-piece commission for Mayo Clinic, solo exhibitions at Athenaeum in La Jolla, CA (2023) and the Minnesota State Capitol (2024), and speaking at the Mayo Clinic’s Conference on Brain Health and Dementia-Paths to Emotional Wellness (2023).
Previous work includes solo exhibitions at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona; Concordia University, St Paul; True/False Film Festival Columbia, MO; Tweed Museum, Duluth; Athenaeum in La Jolla, CA; University of Raparin, Rania, Iraqi Kurdistan; Växjö Kunsthall, Växjö, Sweden; Petrozavodsk City Exhibition Hall, Petrozavodsk, Russia; Isumi City Hall, Isumi City, Japan; Minneapolis St Paul International Airport Terminal 1 & 2, Minneapolis, MN; Thunder Bay Art Gallery; Thunder Bay, Canada; Burnet Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; among others. She often works with communities through her I Love You Institute, which received a community-based art project supported by a Springboard for the Arts community grant. Labovitz also undertakes artist-in-residences nationally and internationally.
Labovitz’s work is held in many private and public collections, including Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport commissioned by Airport Foundation MSP for its permanent art collection; Frederick R Weisman Art Museum; Minnesota Museum of American Art, St Paul; Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona; The Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; The Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth; The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla; Minnesota Historical Society, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, HCMC Minneapolis, St Paul; International Gallery of Portrait, Bosnia-Herzegovina; Växjö Kommun, Sweden; Isumi City Offices, Japan; University of Raparin, Rania Iraqi Kurdistan; and City of Petrozavodsk, Russia.
As part of her praxis, Labovitz connects to communities through activism, anti-racism, and public co-creation. Labovitz was a participant in the initial cohort of the Woke Coach, founding member of Racial Equity Committee at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the steering committee of Turn up the Turn Out. Her current long-term social practice project is the I Love You Institute, an artist-led site-specific project urgently working with communities to address today’s world creatively. It combines art-making, social justice, radical kindness, and relational listening to normalize, saying “I Love You” as an alternative to division and conflict.
Labovitz is currently Adjunct Professor and Mentor at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, in the Master of Fine Arts program.