Liz Deschenes

Liz Deschenes (Boston, 1966) lives and works in New York.

Since the early 1990’s, Liz Deschenes has produced a body of work that emancipates photography from its conventional definition as a document and explores the material condition of the medium and its processes. Making use of the medium’s most elemental aspects, namely paper, light, and chemicals, Deschenes creates shifting surfaces that function as sculptural or architectural rather than photographic objects. The artist’s carefully calibrated installations probe disparate histories of image production, abstraction and exhibition making while collapsing the attributed roles of the viewer and the artwork.

Her work was included in several solo exhibitions such as Liz Deschenes at Parra Romero Gallery in Madrid (2024); Gravity’s Pull at Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York (2023); Works 1997-2022 at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco (2022); Hôtel Le Lièvre #4: Liz Deschenes & Louise Lawler at Campoli Presti in Paris (2021); a changing ratio | rosemarie castoro and liz deschenes at max goelitz in Munich; Liz Deschenes & Sara VanDerBeek at Villa di Geggiano in Siena (2019).

She has had several group shows such as Nineteenth-Century Photography Now at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (2024); Expanded Visions : Photography and Experimentation at CaixaForum in Madrid (2023); ,PRINTseve MATTERS, YEAH! , curaded by Christophe Boutin, Serralves Foundation at the Museum of Contemporary Art de Arte Contemporâne in Porto (2023); Minimalism and Its Afterimage at Kasmin Gallery in New York (2023); ,Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirschhorn Collection at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C.(2023); Color Effect at Galerie Lelong & Co. in New York (2023); For the People of Paris at Campoli Presti in Paris (2022); Shake the dust at Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York (2022); Reciprocity, curated by David Pagliarulo at Marinaro Gallery in New York (2022); Une seconde d’éternité, Pinault Collection at Bourse de Commerce in Paris (2022); Plages at Campoli Presti in London (2017); Le Retour: Markus Amm, Walead Beshty, Liz Deschenes, Nathan Hylden at Nice & Fit Gallery in Berlin (2008).

Her work is included in the permanent public collections of MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Le Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; The Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; CCS Bard Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem and Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee.