Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles is thrilled to present ≈≈≈, the first solo presentation of Sara Vanderbeek’s work in Los Angeles. Vanderbeek’s large-scale dyed paintings on fabric pay homage to the material practices of domestic crafts and the feminist lineage of figuration. While her paintings explore universal themes such as violence, climate crisis, and gender oppression, they also reflect Vanderbeek's personal experience as a pregnant, middle-aged woman living in Texas. Shifting through powerful feelings of witnessed social injustices, she maintains hope for humanity through compassion, connection, and play.

For the exhibition, Vanderbeek has created a labyrinthine installation of suspended paintings that ricochet between contrasting states of being: sadness and joy, nightmares and dreams, anxiety and serenity, life and death. Rendered in vivid colors and bold line work, Vanderbeek playfully casts herself alongside an ensemble of characters and symbols in various scenarios. Vanderbeek’s installation allows the viewers’ presence and imagination to wander with her through the tender and tenuous life cycles amidst a seemingly imminent global collapse.

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Sara Vanderbeek is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and advocate based in Austin, TX. Her work responds to place, politics, motherhood, mental illness, and trauma. Her work has been shown at venues nationally, including The Contemporary Austin (TX); Deitch Projects (NY), among others. Vanderbeek is the Co-founding Executive Director & Curator at DORF, an artist-run experimental contemporary art gallery that provides space for artists and advocacy initiatives. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, City of Austin Economic Development Department, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and was a finalist for the 2022 Artpace International Artist-In-Residence Program. She received her BFA in printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design.

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