Derek Lerner (b.1974, Jacksonville, FL; BFA, The Atlanta College of Art), is an NYC-based artist whose work explores systems: their creation, control, use and experience of them. Lerner's abstract ink on paper drawings co-mingle representations of human-made and natural systems and the tensions between those forces. From an aerial vantage point, his compositions grow, line by line, through an additive, extemporaneous process into fictional spaces that juxtapose these systems, signs, and symbols. They encompass dualities that vacillate between micro and macro scales, dark and light, creation and destruction, human-made and nature-made; functioning as metaphors for ambivalence.
Lerner’s work has been shown nationally and internationally including these venues: the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Montserrat Galleries, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico in Mexico City, the Centre d’Exposition de Val-d’Or in Quebec, Canada and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 2015, New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority commissioned Lerner to create permanent public art for the Avenue X subway station on the F train in Brooklyn. This is his third solo exhibition with the gallery. He maintains his studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
