Lauren Klotzman:
AGNES PELOTON
July 12 - August 30, 2026
As a wordplay, AGNES PELOTON is not solely a pun (a humorous combination of the historical “desert transcendentalist” painter’s name “Agnes Pelton” with the brand name of the exercise bike which rocketed to popularity during COVID), but also a “mondegreen”: a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Illustrating productive thinking from cognitive difference, AGNES PELOTON arises fundamentally from atypical characteristics of the artist’s brain: the title resonates with features of Klotzman’s auditory processing disorder and the works themselves are informed by their aphantasia, the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images as they correlate to descriptive language.
Like Forrest Bess, who – after a homophobic attack caused a TBI and coma – sought to paint the visions found “on the insides of [their] eyelids,” the works presented here are “translations” of closed-eye visual-spatial phenomena that Klotzman perceived while in contemplative states. They are depictions of thought as presented in sensation, and moments of mapping rudimentary internal imagery without the operation of the eye. As illustrative translations of sensations received while in moments of heightened focus, awareness, and sensory deprivation, they offer an alternative method to mapping perceptual phenomena, illustrating visuospatial moments without ocular vision, and give an alternate insight into the inner life and working of the brain.
Even prior to the brain injury Klotzman sustained halfway through graduate school, they had developed methods of contemplative “drawing” with electricity using a video synthesis instrument. Their artistic process is one which seeks to listen deeply to environmental energy, whether metaphysical, electrical, and/or biochemical in nature and to render through translation, those sensorial percepts.
In a “post-Peloton" era, why should we bother to listen to the spiritual fabric of energy when sheer survival feels more urgent? The fact is that – in its fundamental ineffability – the mystical and the spiritual constitutes that which cannot be reduced to a data point. This metric-less stuff is vital to cultivate amid a dystopian, data-driven culture in which mass surveillance of the individual (from social behavior to bodily function) is deeply interwoven into the fabric of existence. The neurological frontier is upon us, and it is essential that, if able, we disconnect and dive deep into our own interiority. There are urgent lessons to be learned in that exploration – contemplation and psychedelia, spirituality and energetic transmission, cosmology and scale.
Lauren Klotzman is an interdisciplinary artist who seeks to push the boundaries of what painting is, operating their studio as a feedback system containing a practice driven by many media forms. As a video practitioner, Klotzman is an instrumentalist, operating an analog modular synthesizer to create video through voltage control. As a painter, they currently focus on composition via non-ocular vision and exploring the constraints of stillness in the context of duration. Across media, Klotzman is interested in how time and energy – as intertwined forces – compose not only the acts of art making, but existence and consciousness in general. Presently based in Texas, they hold an MFA from Yale and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. They have exhibited at The Contemporary Austin, Yossi Milo, and David Castillo Gallery, and contributed to collaborative projects by My Barbarian, Christine Sun Kim, and E.S.P. TV.
AGNES PELOTON
July 12 - August 30, 2026
As a wordplay, AGNES PELOTON is not solely a pun (a humorous combination of the historical “desert transcendentalist” painter’s name “Agnes Pelton” with the brand name of the exercise bike which rocketed to popularity during COVID), but also a “mondegreen”: a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Illustrating productive thinking from cognitive difference, AGNES PELOTON arises fundamentally from atypical characteristics of the artist’s brain: the title resonates with features of Klotzman’s auditory processing disorder and the works themselves are informed by their aphantasia, the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images as they correlate to descriptive language.
Like Forrest Bess, who – after a homophobic attack caused a TBI and coma – sought to paint the visions found “on the insides of [their] eyelids,” the works presented here are “translations” of closed-eye visual-spatial phenomena that Klotzman perceived while in contemplative states. They are depictions of thought as presented in sensation, and moments of mapping rudimentary internal imagery without the operation of the eye. As illustrative translations of sensations received while in moments of heightened focus, awareness, and sensory deprivation, they offer an alternative method to mapping perceptual phenomena, illustrating visuospatial moments without ocular vision, and give an alternate insight into the inner life and working of the brain.
Even prior to the brain injury Klotzman sustained halfway through graduate school, they had developed methods of contemplative “drawing” with electricity using a video synthesis instrument. Their artistic process is one which seeks to listen deeply to environmental energy, whether metaphysical, electrical, and/or biochemical in nature and to render through translation, those sensorial percepts.
In a “post-Peloton" era, why should we bother to listen to the spiritual fabric of energy when sheer survival feels more urgent? The fact is that – in its fundamental ineffability – the mystical and the spiritual constitutes that which cannot be reduced to a data point. This metric-less stuff is vital to cultivate amid a dystopian, data-driven culture in which mass surveillance of the individual (from social behavior to bodily function) is deeply interwoven into the fabric of existence. The neurological frontier is upon us, and it is essential that, if able, we disconnect and dive deep into our own interiority. There are urgent lessons to be learned in that exploration – contemplation and psychedelia, spirituality and energetic transmission, cosmology and scale.
Lauren Klotzman is an interdisciplinary artist who seeks to push the boundaries of what painting is, operating their studio as a feedback system containing a practice driven by many media forms. As a video practitioner, Klotzman is an instrumentalist, operating an analog modular synthesizer to create video through voltage control. As a painter, they currently focus on composition via non-ocular vision and exploring the constraints of stillness in the context of duration. Across media, Klotzman is interested in how time and energy – as intertwined forces – compose not only the acts of art making, but existence and consciousness in general. Presently based in Texas, they hold an MFA from Yale and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. They have exhibited at The Contemporary Austin, Yossi Milo, and David Castillo Gallery, and contributed to collaborative projects by My Barbarian, Christine Sun Kim, and E.S.P. TV.
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