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An Innovator in Digital Art 

New York based artist Robert Lazzarini has been working digitally since 1995 and is considered to be a pioneer in the use of CAD/CAM technology within the field of fine art. His sculptural works are mathematical distortions based on appropriated objects whose transformative qualities make the viewer question very basic tenets of perception. His use of distortion as a tool for offsetting the habitual viewing experience has made the artist a point of reference. 

His seminal installation skulls was part of the exhibition Bitstreams which was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2001. This group show was the first of its kind to present the intersection of fine art and technology and defined the ways in which artists were investigating the creative possibilities of digital art. Mark B. Hanson, in his essay The Affective Topology of New Media Art explains, “Lazzarini’s work functions by catalyzing a perspectival crisis, confronting us as it does with the disorienting ambiguities of digital space — with what would seem to be indices from a world wholly alien to our habitual perceptual expectations and capacities. skulls confronts us, in short, with a spatial problematic we cannot resolve: with the fact of a perspectival distortion that can be realized (and corrected) — and that makes sense visually — only within the weird logic and topology of the computer.” Lazzarini’s skulls created an experience that had never been seen before in visual art. 

Covid and The Dance of Death 

On April 8th, Lazzarini is dropping his first NFTs on SuperRare. His short serial animations, Dance of Death 1-3, revisit common themes for the artist; death, distortion, and the relationship between the image and the object. The movement of the animation gives the figures in the two-dimensional print corporeality by creating a feigned parallax. 

The Dance of Death refers to the late medieval artistic and literary allegory where a cadaver summons people from all stations of life. Based on historical woodcuts, Lazzarini activates the prints to create an ever-moving specter. Mathematical distortions push and pull the image out of register. The original woodcuts refer to a time when death was much more prevalent and our ability to combat disease was almost nonexistent. 

This work takes on a somber yet significant relevancy in the time of Covid. For the entire population of the world, death has been brought to our doorsteps. Something that is normally tucked away is now in the forefront of our minds. Unfortunately, loss has become a new reality for all of us. In the animations, compound sine waves course through the images as both an unseen and a personifying force. Like a loop, death has become familiar again as we are newly and continually faced with what has been lost.

The artist emphasizes the disparity between the physical paper and its digital instance. Backgrounds showing the historicity of the paper, stains, dirt and foxing, represent a degrading ground that is at odds with the longevity of the animation. Here, the artist conflates the old and the new by resurrecting the static imagery of the period woodcut with contemporary digital tools that imbue them with an emotional gravitas. 

Violence and the American Malaise 

Lazzarini’s subjects include memory, optics, death, and aggression. These themes are often couched within the larger discourse of America’s fascination with violence. His work guns 1-5 presents wall-mounted handguns each based on the model 10 .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, the most produced and copied gun in the 20^th century. The viewer is forced to confront an object at odds with the perspective of their own space, something amplified by the familiarity and ubiquity of the object itself. 

Art historian Magdalena Kröner discusses, ”The myth of American violence is palpable in the undercurrents of these objects: in their frayed glamour, they hint at Hollywood’s exploitation of the archetypal American criminal celebrated in movies and pulp novels as well as capitalism’s fetishizing of the object. Robert Lazzarini’s formal operations mine the complexity and the limitations of every manmade artifact. By structurally disrupting their functionality, he transforms things into discursive objects. In that process, his sculptures open themselves up to be discussed as ideas rather than items; as embodiments of abstract concepts such as freedom, power or violence.” 

Lazzarini’s chain-link fence, 2012, suggests something awry in America. The work takes on an iconic section of chain-link fence as its subject and expands the object into a representation of a larger American landscape: one of access and no access. Both boundary and permeable visual field, the sculpture raises questions about authority, security and privilege. The pattern of the chain-link meanders and creates a vertiginous experience, emphasizing the artists interest in optics and phenomenology. Designed to rip skin, the barbed wire running along the top of the sculpture reminds the viewer that there will be a physical price paid for the breach. This, among other corporeal associations, convey how the body is continually implicated into the discourse of Lazzarini’s work. 

About 

Lazzarini exhibits nationally and internationally and is in collections worldwide such as MoMA, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Walker Art Center, The Newark Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Mint Museum, The Milwaukee Art Museum, The Hood Museum of Art, The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Denver Museum of Art, The Speed Art Museum, and The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, among many others. 

Lazzarini will be exhibiting his sculpture skull iii in the upcoming exhibition Nature Morte at The Hole Gallery, NYC on April 8th. He will be in the exhibit Seeing and Perceiving at Ithra, Saudi Arabia opening in May, 2021. The artist will be exhibiting a new series of paintings at Lowell Ryan Projects, LA in June 2021.