CPM is thrilled to announce its exhibition of recent works by Lior Modan, entitled Peer Capital. This is the artist’s first show with the gallery.

The 12 wall works on view in Peer Capital, ranging in size between 15 x 22 and 26 x 30 inches, were created by vacuum-forming richly saturated, hand-dyed velvet over sculpted household objects. The low relief surfaces create a surrealist intermix of recognizable and quasi-recognizable forms, sealed together under a veil of opulent velvet. The softness and tactility of the velvet contributes to the holographic instability of the images, allowing each work to operate on multiple frequencies depending on the play of light and shadow and the perspective of the viewer.

These works conceal as much as they reveal, with specific subjects arriving and vanishing, like images in a magical realist text: a wristwatch floating in a creamy pink environment surrounded by sea horses; a pair of pants containing tree roots or blood vessels; a ghostly peacock standing on a victorian sofa; two vases on a small table in front of a mirror reflecting cartoonish clouds. Each piece is wrapped with a cast rubber frame, mimicking leather belts or wood, which contains the ephemerality of the images within a corporeal container. The titles provide a poetic window into how one might read the works: “The Logic of the Tail,” “Bank of Eyes,” “Always lovers, Always stuck.”

In the space of the exhibition, the individual works come together like a community of peers, and each contributes an excerpt of a shared narrative for the viewer to unravel. The embossed velvet surfaces of the works in Peer Capital freeze moments of visual memory and invite the observer to pause, wonder, and reconsider the confounding beauty of daily life.

Lior Modan (b.1983) lives and works in Queens, New York. Modan received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University's Sculpture + Extended Media program (2013), and his BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, Israel (2009). Modan’s work has been exhibited in venues domestically and abroad. Recent solo exhibitions include: Make Room, Los Angeles (2021), Triumph, Chicago (2017), Golconda Gallery, Tel Aviv (2016), and NURTUREart in Brooklyn (2015). Selected group exhibitions include: the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel, Marinaro Gallery, New York, Peana Projects, Mexico, F2T Gallery, Milan, Italy; Harkawik Gallery, Los Angeles, Coustof Waxman Gallery, New York, WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong, Petach-Tikva Museum, Israel, and Haifa Museum, Israel, among others. In 2022, Modan released a collaboration with Kelly Wearstler named Technicolor. The project consisted of a series of three velvet works, each in editions of 10. His work has been featured in: The Observer, Architectural Digest, Timeout, Modern China, HyperAllergic, Wallpaper Magazine, and NewcityArts.  Modan has been an Artist-in-Residence at the LMCC Workspace Residency (2013-2014, NYC), and the Seven Below Arts initiative (2013, Burlington, VT). Modan received the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Award (2008-10), the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem Excellence Prize (2009), the Phi Kappa Phi award (2011-12), the Feed Biennial award (2013), the VSC Joan Mitchell Foundation fellowship (2013).