Claire Lieberman's Marble Sculptures Explore Danger and Play at Massey Lyuben Gallery

Claire Lieberman presented nine black marble sculptures at Massey Lyuben Gallery from October 12 to November 11, 2017. The exhibition, titled UDBO Playground (Unidentified Dangerous Beautiful Objects), featured works carved from single blocks of stone and arranged in a regimented three-by-three grid. Each sculpture, roughly the size of a large watermelon, was placed on white pedestals at waist height. Lieberman's approach emphasizes materiality and craft over conceptual messaging, inviting tactile engagement despite art world decorum. The objects suggest familiar forms like grenades, Monopoly pieces, or children's tops while remaining deliberately ambiguous and inscrutable. Their polished surfaces achieve an almost supernatural smoothness, with one oblong orb revealing glimpses of rough stone on protruding bosses. Alongside the marble works, the show included prints and blown-glass objects that shared thematic elements of danger, play, and fragility. The glass pieces often resembled guns, creating a visual dialogue with the dense stone sculptures nearby. Lieberman's work references both Minimalist scale manipulation and Surrealist dreamlike strangeness while maintaining a deep reverence for stone's material permanence.