Veils of Velvet: Decoding Lior Modan’s Reliefs
Installation view of Lior Modan: The Foundations, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Dinner Gallery. Photo: JSP Art Photographer.
Tucked into a residential street in Chelsea, Dinner Gallery owes its subtle “if-you-know-you-know” energy to its lack of signage. Once you’re buzzed into the building at 242 W 22nd St, you’ll find the ground floor hosts The Foundations, a solo show of distinctively sculptural work by the Queens-based artist Lior Modan.
The works on view are referred to as paintings, but appear more so as hanging sculptures. These low-relief assemblages feature a variety of objects arranged to evoke unfinished theater sets. Instead of the curtains parting on either side of the stage, however, these scenes are encased behind a layer of velvet, their details revealed only in the ridges and shadows cast by the fabric as it reflects the changing light around it.
Lior Modan, The Play About Color, 2025. Velvet, foam, cardboard, plaster, epoxy putty in cast rubber frame, 18 x 22 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Dinner Gallery. Photo: JSP Art Photographer.
The gallery’s attendant tells me the artist’s studio is full of dye pigments, as Modan carefully sources the fabric before dying it by hand. It’s clear why the artist pays such delicate attention to the textile’s coloring: as visitors move throughout the space, the reliefs on the wall shift and shimmer, revealing and obscuring the work’s ridges and valleys in response to the one’s perspective. In what seems to be a play on Modan’s use of textiles, some of these pieces are framed by belts, which one might imagine buckle these surreal stages in place.
Lior Modan, Rain, 2025. Velvet, foam, cardboard, sand, epoxy putty in artist's frame, 23 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Dinner Gallery. Photo: JSP Art Photographer.
The Play About Color (2025) features stalks of corn in the foreground, perhaps set against the side of a country house; Backyard in Red (2025) depicts the view of Dinner Gallery from the back windows, which lead into a peaceful garden and patio space. In The Play of the Dead Horse (2018), the shape of a horse head rests in front of a decorated enclosure, fenced in by patterned fabric. The viewer may attempt to arrange these scenes into a coherent narrative, but they would find themselves at a loss. While bits and pieces of these representations are translatable, part of the work’s impact is to toy with the audience’s perception, leaving one with questions as to how much they can really see from behind the sheen of textiles.
Lior Modan, L’été, 2025. Velvet, wood, resin, plaster, driftwood, foam, cardboard, sand, epoxy putty in cast rubber frame, 45 x 54 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Dinner Gallery. Photo: by JSP Art Photographer.
Unbeknownst to viewers at first glance, many pieces sentimentally render elements from a series of family memories. Works like Magic cubes (2025) and Rain (2025) feature the outlines of building blocks that Modan’s son loves to play with. L’été (2025) and L’hiver (2025) feature branches from the playground they visit together, acting as the hands of a large wristwatch. Time passes and the trees lose their branches, but these remnants remain, cast in foam, epoxy and rubber, playing with light from behind a mask of fabric.
Memories of daily life meet the intangible in Modan’s work. The artist invites us to contemplate the integrity of memory—when one attempts to understand the ephemeral through adhering to the structures of reason, how real are the resulting narratives we construct? All the world’s a stage, and between the objects cast and the veil cast upon them, the distinction between fact and fiction is blurred behind the dreamy velvet curtain.
Lior Modan, Magic cubes, 2025. Velvet, foam, sand, nitrile, wood in artist's frame, 20 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Dinner Gallery. Photo: by JSP Art Photographer.
Lior Modan: The Foundations is on view at Dinner Gallery from March 13 to April 26, 2025.
