Royale Projects is pleased to present Romance and Reality Will Kiss One Another, a solo
exhibition by Lynn Aldrich, opening April 25, 2026, from 5 to 7 pm, and running through
June 6, 2026.
“Lynn Aldrich is able to firmly lodge a conceptual wrench into the mechanism of
meaning, somewhere between the signified and the signifier…” – Christina Valentine
Romance and Reality Will Kiss One Another presents sites of contemplation, where the
pastoral beauty of nature is inseparable from the ledge upon which it may meet its
end. We walk with the artist along a conceptual tightrope where observation meets the
unknowable. In an unusual pairing of new works with older, less-seen pieces borrowed
from private collections, Lynn Aldrich continues to explore the relationship between
empirical knowledge as acquired by science and an interior longing for insight and
meaning in contemporary life.
With fascination and reverence for the idyllic imagery of water, light, stars and planets,
flora and fauna, Aldrich fosters a practical desire for environmental preservation while
pointing to our excess and artificiality. Known for using readily available consumer
products such as garden hoses, rain downspouts, and cleaning supplies, she opens up
her material search to a broader, textural world, including velvet and sewing threads,
tar and sandpaper, bird swings and fence pickets. Her sculpture and wall constructions
examine the tension between nature and culture as we watch one collapse into the
other.
While pursuing an MFA at ArtCenter, Pasadena, she was introduced to the writings of
Paul Virilio and Simone Weil, revealing to the artist a slower, more attentive way of
thinking and making. Aldrich is known to frequent home and garden stores looking for
specimens to collect and examine in the studio, not unlike a scientist looking for ancient
fossils or undiscovered insects to study in the lab. Unexpected beauty and metaphor
emerge as her artworks are constructed.
In Romance and Reality Will Kiss One Another, Two sculptures from FLORA, a 1989
gallery exhibition referencing forests and trees is reinstalled with fresh plant cuttings.
Also from that year, a room-sized installation of plaid carpet, Grid Buster, is presented
with its original soundtrack of Gregorian Chant and vacuum cleaner interruptions.
Several framed collage studies use fragments of consumer materials along with
commercial photography, ads, and text. These, along with other works, draw a
throughline where Aldrich develops a visual language all her own, with a practice
rooted in a sustained inquiry into the relationship between science and spirituality,
humanity and nature, and the dance between these realms.
Aldrich says, “I make art not about identity, but about what it means to be human with
an outward gaze on the world. A most bizarre, extravagant cosmos is being revealed in
my lifetime. I appreciate the feminism that makes it possible for a woman to think as the
complex person she is and be free to make objects that address what she finds most
compelling for her time on the planet”.
Lynn Aldrich has exhibited extensively with works in prominent private collections and
museums such as MOCA, Los Angeles, LACMA, Orange County Museum of Art, CA,
Portland Art Museum, OR, San Antonio Museum of Art, TX, Ulrich Museum of Art, KS,
Rollins Museum of Art, FL, among others. In 2014, she was awarded a Guggenheim
Fellowship in Creative Arts.
https://www.royaleprojects.com/lynn-aldrich
