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Cape Breton Modern: June Leaf

June Leaf. Untitled 1999-2000. Pencil on paper, 22.9 x 30.5 cm. Courtesy of Edward Thorp Gallery, New York.

Presented in collaboration with Wynick/Tuck Gallery

"I'm a painter," says June Leaf, "but sculpture is my anatomy lesson." Since her artistic beginnings in 1950s Chicago alongside figurative artists Leon Golub and Nancy Spero, Leaf's often fantastic iconography has revolved around representations of women and men. Her drawings and paintings possess an animated quality that is actualized in seriously toy-like, moving sculptures. The exhibition includes recent small sculpture, paintings and a drawing clustered around the suspended metal Figure on a Hoist 1999-2000.

Exhibition Catalogue

Leaf moved to Mabou, Cape Breton, with the photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank in 1970. She built a forge after taking a farrier's course in Truro, and continues to make sculpture using a combination of ironwork, bricolage and mechanical elements. "Shakespearean: a scrimmage between comedy and tragedy," is how Lucy Lippard has described the work of this visionary bricoleuse.

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