liz lessner
mirror stage
May 6 - 29, 2025
FIRST WEDNESDAY OPENING: May 7, FROM 6 - 9PM
ARTICULATE ARTIST TALK: SUNDAY, may 18, AT 4PM.
NORMAL GALLERY HOURS: TUE - SUN, 12PM - 6PM
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Lessner's sculptures use sensory perception to reframe interpersonal interactions. They combine traditional sculpture materials with physical computing to create multi-sensory experiences that are often interactive. These works stem from a framing of resonant gestures that ritualize and familiarize personal memories. These objects consider social feedback loops, popular narratives of desire, as well as mythology and nostalgia and the fetishism that both imply. They explore negotiations of power and status, authenticity and performance, and preconscious affinities and desires.
This work is influenced by Lygia Clark’s Sensorial and Relational Objects which use focused gestural performances to reframe the processing of memories, interpersonal interactions, and conceptions of self. This work applies material and sensory juxtaposition strategies to the design of objects that use embedded electronics. The resulting sculptures call on our embodied knowledge and temporal sensibilities in a process that builds on the suggestion in Clark's work that relational objects can be transformative and therapeutic.
These sculptures use technology and sensory engagement as their materials. They lead to further questions: What worlds become possible if we take strategies of sensory engagement as guides when building with new technologies? What possible worlds might we discover if we invent new forms?
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.
This exhibition is presented alongside the latest works from Edgar Cano-Lopez, Brandon Surtain, and John Isiah Walton. All works from these artists are on view, free of charge, during regular gallery hours (12 - 6 p.m., Tue - Sun) from May 6 - 29, 2024.