Reena Spaulings presents Pretty Vacant, a solo exhibition by Klara Liden.

For her fourth exhibition at this gallery, Liden has gathered several vanloads of discarded Christmas trees found on the sidewalks of Manhattan during the first week of 2012. Installed behind a plywood wall – painted OSHA blue like the temporary walls surrounding urban construction sites – and filling the gallery like a forest, the trashed trees are given a few weeks’ respite from their inevitable end at a New York mulching facility. Placed in water-­‐filled stands and buckets, under the purple-­‐ish lights sometimes used for growing marijuana in basements, this living-­‐dead material puts the holiday season in a state of suspension, making it out-­‐last itself in the form of an eerie, indoor nature preserve (on life support). A narrow trail winds through the forest, leading to a sofa where viewers can sit and enjoy the somewhat oppressive perfume of the trees. The title of this installation is S.A.D.

In the gallery’s office area – where an electrical problem has caused a set of overhead lights to go out – Liden has suspended a lamp made from orange traffic cones taken from nearby streets.

Also on view are three framed inkjet prints – self-­‐portraits of Liden engaging with various urban locales. These images show the artist disappearing into a manhole in Berlin, climbing a lamppost at night in San Antonio, and, in New York, standing out on a rotting pylon in the Hudson River.

A hand-­‐made flipbook re-­‐animates a sequence of three descents into Berlin manholes by Liden.

Recent exhibitions by Klara Liden include Occupied at Galerie Neu/Berlin, Klara Liden at the Serpentine Gallery/London and Moderna Museet/Stockholm, Rumpfflächen und Plündererbanden at Kunstverein Bonn, and Toujours être ailleurs at Jeu de Paume/Paris.