Xcel Energy Gallery
a lazy love is a multimedia installation that explores the liminal space between labor and rest, love and loss. After a long day’s work, Omaha-based artist Ella Weber, treats herself to a free 90-minute massage at Nebraska Furniture Mart, America’s largest home furnishing store. While reclining in a massage chair, she records the dialogue of couples shopping for La-Z-Boy chairs.
Oh my word this feels so nice. My back is in heaven. I don’t want to lose you.
The exhibition features video, photography, drawing, and Lazy Boy Poetry. Weber renders a series of graphite drawings embodying her failed relationships and lost loves in La-Z-Boy recliners. These chairs hold the faces of past lives, along with conversations and personal connections. Weber intentionally leaves each drawing “unfinished” to reflect upon an incomplete love.
In her video, A Massage Chair Without A Body, Weber superimposes a massage chair vibrating underwater while Koi fish, a symbol of love and friendship, swim in and out of the frame. Beneath the surface, Weber reveals the skin of her grandmother’s chest searching for breath on her deathbed.
a lazy love plays with ideas of absurdity and grief within the mundane, while longing for a tangible, lasting love.
Ella Weber is a basement-based artist and author working across image, text, comedy, and video. Trained in printmaking, Weber received an MFA from the University of Kansas in 2015. She has attended numerous residencies and exhibited widely. Recent solo shows include exhibitions at Radial Gallery, (Dayton, OH) Munson (Utica, NY), The Union for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), and Rogers Art Gallery (Las Vegas, NV). Her debut novel The Deli Diaries is published with Latah Books.
Plains Art Museum thanks our generous PlainsArt4All members and donors, and our Organizational Partners for their support. Additional support provided by The McKnight Foundation, FM Area Foundation, The Arts Partnership, The FUNd at Plains Art Museum, and the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funds from the North Dakota Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ideation Workshop: Observation
Tuesday, March 26 • $10
During this workshop Weber will discuss her exhibition and her practice as an artist. Weber will walk participants through techniques and exercises about observation and how to think about everyday life as an art form.
Artist Talk
Thursday, March 28, 6-7 pm
Join us for a conversation with artist Ella Weber.
