Shana Lutker

Shana Lutker’s oeuvre of drawings, maquettes, and multipart installations is deeply influenced by Sigmund Freud, with the dream world figuring prominently in her work. Lutker developed one series after dreaming about each artwork and later realized them in waking life. A different series entailed Lutker recording her dreams with as much detail as possible and subsequently integrating them into a faux newspaper, the headlines announcing each dream scenario.

Though Lutker makes countless art-historical references, she takes note first and foremost from the Surrealists. In fact, Lutker has undertaken extensive research on the history and fistfights among the group. The knowledge she gained from both visiting the Parisian locations of the altercations and gathering firsthand accounts of interactions became the basis of The Nose, The Cane, The Broken Left Arm, a play commissioned for Performa 13, in which Lutker newly imagines a 1923 brawl that broke out at a Dada variety show.

Solo exhibitions of Lutker’s work have been staged at the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco and Mexico City’s SOMA. Selected group exhibitions include those at the SculptureCenter in New York and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, as well as Performa and the 2014 Whitney Biennial, both in New York.