Liz Lessner: Raw/hide
Liz Lessner is a sculptor whose work combines traditional fabrication techniques and emerging technologies to create novel sensory experiences. She was the 2023-24 Nadine Carter Russel Endowed Chair in the School of Art at Louisiana State University and a 2019 Scholar in Residence at the CrossLab for Innovation and Prototyping at the University of Fortaleza. She was also 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 at the University of Fortaleza in Ceará, Brazil. Lessner has had solo shows at the Front in New Orleans, LA; VisArts in Rockville, MD; Honfleur Gallery in Washington, D.C.; and Big Orbit, a Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts Project Space in Buffalo, NY. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York; Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, New York; Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology, Michoacán, Mexico; and Everard Read’s Circa Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. Her research into embedded electronics’ ability to create novel sensory experiences has been supported by grants like the Mark Diamond Research Fund and fellowships like the Eyeo Artists Fellowship.
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 sensory experience. She is also a co-founder of Yes We Cannibal, the collaborative creative practice of Mat Keel and Liz Lessner. Their collaboration results in artworks, artifacts, and a relational aesthetics project in the form of a 2020-2025 Baton Rouge, LA based experimental project space for art, performance, and social research.
About the Exhibit
Liz makes sculptures that use sensory perception to reframe interpersonal interactions. These objects combine traditional sculpture materials with computing to create multi-sensory experiences that are often interactive. Gesture is the fulcrum of this work, leading to sculptures and installations that are relational and responsive. 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 through forms that unsettle and attract. These works activate viewers’ bodily awareness, and invite viewers to invent ways of interacting with the work that the artist has not conceived.
- Curator Jaik Faulk
