LAUREN WAS
This new body of work emerges from a personal and creative tug-of-war between aesthetic conventions and an instinctive pull toward the maximal, and the surreal. As Lauren Was designed her new home and studio, she resisted the pervasive Scandinavian minimalism that saturates contemporary design. Instead, she leaned into her natural inclination for bright color, sculptural lighting, and unruly forms. The result: chandeliers and lamps that blur the line between function and fantasy.
Crafted from paper clay and painted in electric, acidic hues; the chandeliers evoke limbs, from both tree and human. Hair pours from glowing rings, hands bloom with lightbulbs, and natural forms are warped into something both eerie and joyful. Inspired by decay, rebirth, and the dreamlike logic of nature, these works blur the line between the domestic and the mythical.
Lauren Was is a part of the collaborative duo Ghost of a Dream, founded in 2008 with Adam Eckstrom. This is her first time showing her solo work outside of the collaborative project since 2007. Ghost of a Dream's work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington (Arlington, VA) MassArt Art Museum (Boston, MA), Ackland Art Museum (Chapel Hill, NC), Hunterdon Art Museum (Clinton, NJ), and at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center (Colorado Springs, CO) and in group exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum (Bentonville, AR), Courtauld Museum (London, UK), Minneapolis Institute of Art, Frist Center for Visual Arts (Nashville, TN), The Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC), Museum of Craft and Design (San Francisco), and The Textile Museum of Canada (Toronto, CA) among other venues.
Ghost of a Dream has received support from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Artist Resource Trust, Jerome Foundation. They received the first annual Young Masters Art Prize in London and have participated in artist residencies in Berlin, Basel, Beijing, France, and at venues throughout the US including Bemis Center, ISCP, Smack Mellon, Wassaic Project, the Joan Mitchell Foundation AIR in New Orleans, and Elsewhere Museum. They will attend the Rauschenberg Foundation AIR in 2026. Ghost of a Dream’s work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Vogue Magazine, Hyperallergic, BlouinArtinfo, ArtFCity, W Magazine, Interview Magazine, and World of Interiors.