Cybele Lyle
Sense of Space (in 3 parts)
a monograph on the varied work of Cybele Lyle
with new writing by Renee Gladman and Aaron Harbour
Edition of 200, $55
A small suite of new, unique works, paint on photographs, is available for $500 each unframed, $750 framed (images below the book cover) Email the gallery for preorders of the book and to see the available prints

Part I - in time

I started this book as a catalog – a record of my work as it developed over time. That makes sense to do, as in some ways time is linear. One exhibition comes out of another and influences the next. Also, time is very relevant to what’s happening in the work. What’s happening in my life directly impacts my art. My practice started when I lost my dad, I needed to sort through that relationship, which largely took the form of exploring architecture, landscape, and place – what were these things to him, and what were they to me? That is a continuous thread in my work, as it seems perhaps to be a lifelong conversation. 

Other significant moments along the timeline, led to changes in the work. As a queer person living in San Francisco, my side of the conversation about architecture became louder – a need for queer space took center stage. When a relationship ended, I needed to adjust the architecture – things didn’t stand up the way they did before – wood frames got deconstructed into parts to find new ways to construct a space to live within. As time passed, the architecture sometimes felt cold and empty - what is architecture without an interior, without a place to sit and be present? My work had an architecture and a landscape, but what was inside? A new conversation arose in my work alongside a new relationship. A need for the space to feel inhabitable came front and center, leading to new work. Each of these moments end up feeling like a fragment – a moment in time – that cannot be separated from what came before or what needs to follow. For me, seeing the work through time is an important way of putting all the fragments together. But it only tells one story. 

Part II - through people and place

Place is at the core of my work, whether that place is where I live, my studio, where I connect with others, or where I get lost in the outdoors. By getting lost, I mean finding new parts of myself – I photograph natural landscapes and ecosystems, as a way of understanding the past, while forging new relationships to the land as an adult, and finding new space for the future.

In some ways, place and people are inseparable in how they enter my work. When I moved from San Francisco to New York, I missed my queer community and needed to create room for them in my installations. Video projections became a way to have them in my spaces with me. I treated video as collage, much like my photographs, to bring them into my installations. When I moved to Los Angeles, near where I grew up, a need for domesticity stepped into my work, influenced by re-connecting to my roots and building a new family. Textiles, chairs, and floor pieces entered my installations as a new counterpoint to nature and architecture.

People play another role in my practice as well. They are invited into the space to activate the installation by performing music, dance, sharing a communal event, or having a quiet solitary experience. I am interested in creating spaces of permission and potential – where people can have their own experience and bring their own perspective into the work.

Part III - from within

I made this book the way I make all my work – through an iterative process of printing, cutting, collaging, and re-photographing – as it is my process. I work intuitively. Instead of looking at one show at a time, I often ended up with different shows next to each other, both expanding into something new and cutting something out. I realized that I was getting at something in my work that just couldn’t be seen in the other two parts of the book – the experience of the work. The juxtapositions in part three point to a feeling of how it is to inhabit these spaces, in a way that is specific to a book – in turning pages. As with my work in general, this book is a cumulation of multiple parts – while they each tell a story, they need each other to tell the full story.