Lora Fosberg

Lora Fosberg (she/her) was born in Waukegan, IL, and currently lives and works in Michigan City, IN. She received her BFA from the University of Illinois and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She specializes in painting, printmaking, and sculpture, and has shown extensively around the world including Copenhagen, London, NYC, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

​Lora Fosberg’s work speaks to the power of form, the capacity of iconography to create a universal language that communicates the banalities and complexities of the human experience. Fosberg’s process is deeply anthropological, bound up in the intricacies and intimacies of human life—memories, emotions, our relationships with others, and with nature. Disarming her viewers through familiar imagery and language in her work, often rendered in an accessible, animated manner, with a touch of cheeky humor, Fosberg affords them the space to regress to a particular memory, a moment of understanding, a conflict, an absence, a connection to another person, or to nature.​

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Upcoming: Lora Fosberg at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, September 2025. Recent Shows: Help I'm Alive, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL, March–April 2024; Beyond was all around us, Southbend Museum of Art, July–October 2024; The Quiet is so Noisy, curated by Lora Fosberg, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, September–October 2024; the SMOKE SHOW, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago IL, 2023; Under the Sun, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, 2023; Art Miami, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2022–2023; Eyediolect: Susanne Doremus selects, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, 2022; What is not is isn’t is, Linda Warren Projects, Chicago IL, 2018; I would lie to me, Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2017; Love Loves the Unlovable, IUNW, Gary, IN, 2016; More Trees Please, Linda Warren Projects, Chicago, IL, 2016; Everything Looks Perfect From Far Away, Lubeznick Center For the Arts, Michigan City, IN, 2015; The End of Absurdity, Linda Warren Projects, Chicago, IL, 2014; Everything and Nothing, Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2014; The Miracle of the Actual, Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2012; Fallible memories and wayward fictions, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago IL, 2012; Do It Now, Eight Modern Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, 2011; You Can’t Fall Off the Floor, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2010; Live or Live, Kayo Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT, 2010; Feel the Now, Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2009; A Field Guide to Forgetting, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2008; For Now, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2007; Dystopia for Daydreamers, UICA (Urban Institute for Contemporary Art), Grand Rapids, MI, 2007; Yes to Everything, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2006; 12 x 12:New Artists/New Work, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, 2006; Greener Grass, Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, MI, 2003; Really Huge, Aron Packer Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2002; Both Ends burning, Grand Street Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1999; More is More, Lorenzo Rodriguez Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1998; One Hand on the Dark Side, Anchor Graphics, Chicago, IL, 1997; The Now, Anchor Graphics, Chicago, IL, 1995. Selected Group Exhibitions: Human / Nature: the weight of our actions on the natural world, Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL, 2021; Art Miami, Zolla Lieberman Gallery, 2021; Summer Fun, ZG Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2019; Curators Create, Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago, IL, 2019; Typeforce 8, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago, IL, 2018; summertime, La Fontsee Gallery, Grand Rapids, MI, 2016; Typeforce 7, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Bridgeport, IL, 2016; NJAPF, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, 2016; Saving the Dunes, Artist’s Paths, Marshall J. Gardner Art Center, Miller Beach, IN, 2015; The steamroller printmaking project, Lubeznick Center for the Arts, Michigan City, IN, 2015; Not just another pretty face, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, 2014; The three, wv15, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2012; Not just another pretty face, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, 2012; Inaugural Show, Walnut Ink Gallery, Michigan City, IN, 2011; Wishing You Love and Happiness and Curiosity Forever, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2011; (S)edition, curated by Marc Pascale, Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts (UICA), Grand Rapids, MI, 2011; Typeforce, Co-prosperity Sphere, Chicago, IL, 2011; ART Chicago, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2011; NEXT art fair, Pele Prints, St. Louis, MO, 2011; Interface, Center of Creative Arts (COCA), curated by Pele Prints, St. Louis, MO, 2011; ART Chicago, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2009; NEXT art fair, represented by Pele Prints, St. Louis, MO, 2009; Spellbound, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, 2009; Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, 2009; Emmett Kerrigan and Lora Fosberg, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2009; Clouds Et. Al, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2008; ART Chicago, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2008; NEXT art fair, Pele Prints, St. Louis, MO, 2008; Red Dot art fair, represented by Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2008; Pulse art fair Miami, Jack Fischer Gallery, Miami, FL, 2008; 44 New Drawings, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2007; ART Chicago, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2007; Kent State University with Pierogi Flat Files, drawing invitational, Kent, OH, 2007; Art LA, Linda Warren Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2006; Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI, 2006; Drawing No Conclusions, curated by Dominic Molon, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL, 2006; Layer on Layer:  a collage show, Judith Racht Gallery, Harbert, MI, 2006; ART Chicago, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2006; Fragile, handle with care, Museum Works Gallery, New York, NY, 2005; Species, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2004; Highlights, Junc Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2004; me vs. you, Melanee Cooper Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2004; Politics as Usual, Aron Packer Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2003; Natural History, Aron Packer Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2002; Affordable Art Fair, New York, Aron Packer Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2002; 10th Annual Figurative Small Works Show, Armory Art Center, West Palm Beach, FL, 2001; 14th Annual McNeese National Works on Paper, McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA, 2001; Dia des Los Muertos, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1999.

I'm terrible at writing so I'll let someone else describe me and my work. (Thank you Charles Venkatesh Young, Chicago Reader, March 2024:)

Lora Fosberg made a name for herself baring the midwestern psyche in farcical installations replete with snippy, conversational bits of text. Her new work, however, foregrounds a new set of innocuous midwestern landscapes. They may appear, as the exhibition text states, a “foil to [her] signature comedic existentialism,” but thorough examination reveals that Fosberg’s hilarious contradictions and ironic witticisms are operating on a subtler wavelength.

Two perfectly framed nature scenes—one white-on-black, the other black-on-white—hang on the gallery’s far wall. Though the two landscapes are nearly identical in subject, their chromatic inversion imbues each with its own psychic qualities—the former appears idyllic, the latter ominous. What silly, fallible humans we are to respond so strongly to a mere palette reversal. The works’ titles, Forever Is Not Enough and Beyond Was All Around Us, respectively, reach toward the sublime and are rendered impotent by our mechanistic and easily fooled perception of their contents.

Less muted in their irony are Fosberg’s cartoonish porcelain skulls. If traditional memento mori say “remember you must die,” Fosberg’s use of the motif teases, “Aren’t you just cute as a bug under all that skin?” The sense that humans know much less than they presume to, especially on the well-trodden subjects of nature and death, is palpable in this newer work. Whether the artist is laughing with viewers in celebration of their collective absurdity or mocking their cloying sentimentality, however, remains unclear.