Statement

I use art to queer the places around me, recording where I am by collecting materials, taking photos, video and/or drawing and then transforming these raw materials into new spaces. I am equally drawn to the architecture of constructed, urban spaces and the natural environment. Final works come together through installation as fragments of architecture – existing somewhere in between built structures, painting, textiles, and nature.

Coming out of photography and abstract painting, the making is one of feeling a way through a space, making personal the nature and structures we inherit. My experimental-based practice is guided by a sensual exploration of materials, playing with materiality, color, scale, line, and dimensionality.

My installations take many forms, but often involve photography, video projection, and/or collage that incorporate the natural environment. Other components might include architectural interventions with open walls, painted beams, and created portals, and windows. More recently, within these constructed architectures, I bring in textiles, chairs, and floor pieces that allow the spaces to be inhabited in new ways. These altered spaces often invert interior and exterior and the relationship between two- and three-dimensional space.

The sense of potential and permission that exists in reconstructing architecture inspires my work. While the making of the work tends to involve a personal/internal conversation of understanding the world around me and who I am within it, the spaces themselves are intended to be open. I invite viewers to shape their experience in relation to the art, either alone or in a group. 

Bio

Cybele Lyle is a California-based artist whose installation, video and 2D work explores place and identity by reconstructing her surrounding architecture, interior space and natural environment. Cybele graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in Environmental Studies, then went on to get a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in Printmaking and an MFA in Painting/Combined Media from Hunter College in New York in 2007. She has held residencies at Ox-Bow, Project 387, Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Recology, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. Her works have been exhibited across the United States including at the 205 Hudson St Hunter Gallery, New York; Bemis Center, Omaha; Oakland Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Orange County Museum of Art, and Et al. gallery, San Francisco, among others. Cybele is a recipient of the Kala Fellowship, the Yozo Hamaguchi Printmaking award, and the Tony Smith Award. Cybele currently has a studio at the Bendix Building in Los Angeles and is represented by Et al. Gallery in San Francisco.

Born in Pasadena, CA

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA