Mira Schor

Mira Schor returns to Lyles & King in an exhibition showcasing paintings made between 2017 and the end of 2020. Known for her overtly political work, a group of Schor’s more reflective paintings created during the pandemic is also on view.

Schor’s output over the past three years can be described as finding a balance between responding to specific political and humanitarian issues and considering her role as an artist at the possible end of history. It’s an approach that has allowed the political, aesthetic, and conceptual dimensions to offer answers to the questions she poses with her work. As Schor asks in the thickly painted gesso of her 2018 painting “What Kind of Art Will We Make Under Fascism?”, her later works realize the only certainties of life are the inevitable. Her monumental painting The Painter’s Studio (2020) recalls the 1855 Courbet allegorical painting of the same name-- only this time, Schor casts the female nude as the painter, overseen by an ocular phallus and a skull in her studio. These pictorial symbols, indicative of the male gaze and the passage of time, serve as a reminder of the inescapable: memento mori.