Mary Lucier: Leaving Earth

Mary Lucier: Leaving Earth

November 7, 2026 – March 2, 2027

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 7, 5:00 – 7:00 pm, with an artist talk at 5:00 pm

Abattoir Gallery is thrilled to present Mary Lucier’s video installation, Leaving Earth, presented in partnership with Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York. Lucier is an accomplished and renowned visual artist well-known for her achievements and contributions to video art, including multi-channel installation, since the early 1970s. Her work has received extensive institutional recognition over the course of her career, including major museum presentations in Ohio in Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in Cleveland—as well as her first exhibition with the gallery— and is an extension of Abattoir’s mission to introduce historically important artists with Ohio connections to Cleveland audiences. 

Leaving Earth will open Saturday, November 7, with a reception from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. The artist will give a brief talk at 5:00 pm.

Leaving Earth is a multi-channel video and sound installation inspired by excerpts from the final journal of Lucier’s late husband, the painter Robert Berlind. In this journal, Berlind fearlessly documented his thoughts on his impending death from a terminal illness. His writings reflect his appreciation of life with a remarkable lack of anxiety about the inevitable end—more curiosity than dread.

The imagery in Lucier’s work consists of sequences of protean video and still images filmed in both her domestic and working environments. Most were shot after Berlind’s passing, reflecting the world as she experienced it during his final days and after. Berlind’s terse epigraphs appear throughout as white text on a black background, serving as evocative companions to the flow of images in Leaving Earth.

pictures already formed

more remembrance than presence.

Lucier describes this nine-channel installation as one where "words, pictures, and sound become interchangeable, not serving as descriptions but as a rumination on reality and a form of coping." Unlike much of Lucier’s earlier work, it does not follow a synchronous and sequential internal structure, instead allowing for random juxtapositions, repetitive thoughts, and the possibility of chaos to occur, reflecting the potential disarray in the dying man's mind. The pictorial narrative in Leaving Earth is underscored by Berlind's description of his mental state:

a succession of discontinuous moments occur

then disappear

without the elemental structure of sequence

And yet . . . I forget to fear death

Mary Lucier (b. 1944, Bucyrus, OH) has been noted for her contributions to the form of multi-monitor, multi-channel video installation since the early 1970s. Her work prior to her introduction to video was largely concerned with manipulation of the black and white image through a graphic performative process. She also produced several live performances with the feminist video collective Red White Yellow and Black (along with Shigeko Kubota, Cecilia Sandoval and Charlotte Warren) at the original Kitchen in 1972 and '73. Archival materials from this collective were also exhibited in 2023.

In 1993 the Toledo Museum commissioned and premiered the installation Noah’s Raven which was acquired by the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. Lucier has been featured twice in solo presentations at the Columbus Museum, as well as in several group exhibitions there. Her two-channel work, Migration 2000, is in the museum’s collection. Wilderness was included in a group exhibition at the Dayton Art Institute called A Certain Slant of Light. She has participated in a panel on video art at the Cleveland Museum. 

Lucier's video installations have been shown in major museums and galleries around the world. Many now reside in important collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; and the National Academy of Design, NY, among others. She has also produced a significant body of single-channel works which have been screened in museums and festivals world-wide.  From the austere black and white experiments of the 1970's to recent studies of Japanese Buddhist ceremonies and Dakota Sioux dances, these works acknowledge the influence of both Avant Garde and documentary practices in American art and cinema.

Lucier has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital, Anonymous Was a Woman, the Nancy Graves Foundation, USA Artists, the American Film Institute, the Jerome Foundation, the New York State council on the Arts, and the Japan-US Friendship Commission. Her teaching appointments have included the Distinguished Visiting Professor in Art and Art History at UC Davis; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; adjunct professor in the department of VES at Harvard University; and Visiting Professor in Video Art at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, among others. She lives and works in New York City and Cochecton, NY, where she has established a studio and archive for video art.

Abattoir Gallery presents a program of local, regional, and national artists, designed to elicit thought-provoking conversation and discussion. The gallery has introduced major artists with Cleveland connections to audiences in Northeast Ohio, fostering education and engagement with contemporary art in the region. The gallery has placed work in numerous museum and prestigious corporate collections including the Cleveland Clinic Art Program, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Akron Art Museum, the Carnegie Museum, and the Orange County Museum of Art, California. Abattoir presents at premier national and international art fairs.

Founded in 2010, Cristin Tierney Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with a deep commitment to the presentation, development, and support of a roster of both established and emerging artists. Its program emphasizes artists engaged with critical theory and art history, with an emphasis on conceptual, video, and performance art. Education and audience engagement is central to our mission. Cristin Tierney Gallery is a member of the ADAA (Art Dealers Association of America).

Inquiries: lisa@abattoirgallery.com

Image: Still from Leaving Earth, 2023.