speculative morphologies: Kendall Buster and linn meyers

Overview
linn meyers untitled , 2019 Lithograph on paper 17.9 x 14.9 in.
linn meyers
untitled , 2019
Lithograph on paper
17.9 x 14.9 in.

Mor·phol·o·gy noun 

the study of the form of things

speculative morphologies brings together the work of Kendall Buster and linn meyers, two artists who build imagined worlds through systems of line, shape, and form. Their practices transform essential forms into living images that shift, breathe, and evolve. In the exhibition, morphology becomes a way to understand not only how these works are made, but how they function as artworks that are open, dynamic, and alive with possibility.

Reexamining the divide between the organic and the artificial, speculative morphologies highlights the artists’ shared interest in unique visual languages. For Buster, this emerges as a “marriage of architecture and biology,” while Meyers situates her practice in an ambiguous terrain where thing and place blur. What appears structural may operate as environment, and a surface can act as both object and site. Together, their works challenge conventional notions of scale and spatial perception. A single mark or contour can expand into a monumental structure, while large forms can draw the eye inward toward the microscopic.

While these works transport viewers, they are undeniable proofs of human existence. Every curve, line, and layered surface is evidence of the artist’s hand, producing an otherworldly ecosystem animated by movement, and sometimes in stillness. 

By placing Buster and meyers in dialogue, speculative morphologies examines how disparate parts coalesce into a whole. The pairing invites viewers to consider how architecture and nature coexist when stripped of their familiar connotations and distilled to their most elemental forms: line and shape. In doing so, speculative morphologies proposes that refuge is not simply a place to find in our increasingly unstable and uncertain present, but can be a reorientation of one’s perception—a shift in how we see, sense, and connect with one another and with the world around us.

Curated by Georgetown University Curatorial Studies graduate students Abigail Dunnigan, Miranda Glasgow, Jessica Harris, Mia Johnson, Alexandra Morse, Qaman Omar, Anne Satre, Lily Schwegler, Reina Shin, and Mason Stempel, under the guidance of Professor Jaynelle Hazard. This exhibition is presented in partnership with The Kreeger Museum and highlights two artists whose work has contributed meaningfully to the museum’s curatorial legacy.

The exhibition is generously supported by Lucille and Richard F.X. Spagnuolo.

Installation Views
Photographs by Vivian Marie Doering 
Works
About the Artist
KENDALL BUSTER 

Kendall Buster first studied microbiology and received a bachelor’s degree in medical technology before pursuing an education in art. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington DC and a Master in Fine Arts in Sculpture from Yale University while participating in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Studio Program in New York City.

 

Equally inspired by the monumental and the microscopic, her large-scale sculptures operate as scale models for imaginary places and converse with the particulars of existing built spaces. Her work, informed at once by the built environment and by biological morphologies has been exhibited in numerous venues nationally and internationally. These include The Hirshhorn Museum and the Kreeger Museum in Washington, DC, Artist’s Space and The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, The Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee, The Boise Art Museum in Boise, Idaho, Suyama Space in Seattle, Washington, the Bahnhof Westend in Berlin, Commune.1 in Cape Town, and Hazard Gallery in Johannesburg.

 

Commissioned projects include a pier for The Indianapolis Museum of Art’s Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park and permanent site-responsive works for The Frick Chemistry Building at Princeton University, Gilman Hall at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, The San Francisco International Airport, The Health and Biosciences Center at The University of Houston, and the US Embassy in Rabat, Morocco. Buster was interviewed by Neda Ulaby on NPR’s Morning Edition as part of a series on art and science and in 2005 was the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in the Arts.

 

She is a professor in the Department of Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

 

 

linn meyers 

Known for her intricate mark-making and immersive drawing installations, linn meyers’s work has been the focus of solo exhibitions at prestigious museums, including the Hirshhorn Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the Phillips Collection, among others. With studios in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, meyers has established a distinctive voice in contemporary drawing and painting.

 

meyers’s works have been exhibited internationally at institutions including the AmorePacific Museum of Art in Seoul, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC, the Drawing Center in New York, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. The British Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art are among the many institutions that have acquired her work.

 

meyers’s artistic practice has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, several DC Commission on the Arts fellowship awards, and the Anonymous Was a Woman Award. A graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA) and the California College of the Arts (MFA), linn meyers creates paintings and drawings that invite viewers to explore the profound physical and temporal dimensions of visual art.

 

meyers currently divides her time between Washington, DC, and Los Angeles.

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