May 2 - June 1, 2023

FIRST WEDNESDAY OPENING: May 3, FROM 6 - 9PM

ARTICULATE ARTIST TALK: SUNDAY, may 7, AT 4PM.

NORMAL GALLERY HOURS: TUE - SUN, 12PM - 6PM

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Liz Lessner is an artist who creates sculptures using both old and new techniques, utilizing technology, to make exciting things you can interact with. Her installations use your senses to make you think differently about how people interact. The sculptures are based on personal memories and stories, and they explore how people influence each other, what we want, and how we feel.

“The works in ‘illegible seeks same’ evolved from a series of interrelated projects, Speak Make/ Fala Fazer and Stills Interstitial Castings. Speak Make is an algorithm that produces parametrically designed sculptures whose forms, texturing, and layout are controlled by speech. A Grasshopper/Rhino algorithm takes soundbites and uses the parameters of that audio to arrange shapes derived from Interstitial Castings. Interstitial Castings are sculptures of the negative space between two people engaged in intimate gestures. They are transductions of ephemeral moments of gestural communication. Speak Make uses 2-d interpretations of 3-D sculptures to create new forms in Rhino’s model space. These iterations were rapid prototyped in mild steel and pla. The steel was then reshaped into its present form. This project engages my ongoing fascination with preconscious forms of affect, how gesture translates between impulse and agency, and the ways that memory and time mutate the significance of those affects and interactions.” - Lessner

Lessner was a 2019 Fulbright Scholar affiliated with the Department of Expressions and Languages at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro as well as the CrossLab Research Group and the Lab for Innovation and Prototyping at the University of Fortaleza in Ceará, Brazil. Lessner has had solo shows at VisArts in Rockville, MD; Honfleur Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Big Orbit, a Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts Project Space in Buffalo, NY; and The University of Oregon’s Eric Washburne Gallery in Eugene, OR. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including A.I.R. gallery in Brooklyn, NY; The CrossLab for Innovation and Prototyping at the University of Fortaleza in Fortaleza, Brazil; the Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology in Michoacán, Mexico; and Everard Read’s Circa Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. She has an MFA in Media Study from the University at Buffalo. Her research into embedded electronics' ability to create novel sensory experiences has been supported by grants like the Mark Diamond Research Fund, fellowships like the Eyeo Artists Fellowship, and awards like a Fulbright Research Award.

She is the founder of the Sensory Engagement Lab, a community-based research platform that probes how novel combinations of materials and embedded electronics contribute to the sensory experience by fostering collaborations between artists, technologists, and other thinkers to produce interactive and experimental artworks. She is also a co-founder of Yes We Cannibal, a Baton Rouge, LA-based project space for unrestricted and non-hierarchical cultural experimentation in the areas of art, music, food, social research, and performance.

Learn more about Liz Lessner

This exhibition is presented alongside the latest works from James Burke, Sarah House, and Brian Kelly. All works from these artists are on view, free of charge, during regular gallery hours (12 - 6 p.m., Tue - Sun) from May 2 through June 1, 2023.