Artist Talk: Contents May Have Shifted by INSTINC AIR MARGARET LANZETTA(NYC)
2 FEB 2018, 7pm
A presentation of the historical development of my work beginning with sculpture and moving into painting and printmaking. The lecture will emphasize conceptual concerns, material, pattern, 2D design and color elements in the work. The lecture will chronicle the development of my work, both conceptually and professionally, as also inspired by foreign research opportunities in Southeast Asia, India, Syria, Morocco as a Fulbright Research Scholar.
About Margaret Lanzetta
MARGARET LANZETTA is a New York-based artist best known for abstract, culturally inspired work using digitized motifs drawn from historic textiles, Buddhism, 60’s pop culture, nature and contemporary industry. With varying media: painting, silkscreen, and photography; and a thematic interest in saturated color, repetition and pattern, a lexicon of motifs are used to explore larger issues of political power, and the migration of culture and language. In Lanzetta’s work, patterns collide, and reappear. Her work is represented in numerous museum and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The British Museum, and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Lanzetta’s work is currently on view in the Museum of Modern Art, New York (group show) and was featured in the 2016 Kochi-Muziris Biennale Collateral Projects, India. Other New York exhibitions include Kenise Barnes Fine Art, 2015, Heskin Contemporary, 2014 (solos); and the Queens Museum Biennial (group). Lanzetta received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and is a recipient of several awards including three Fulbright Fellowship: an inaugural Global Flex Award to India/Singapore/Thailand (2016-2018), India/Syria (2007-8) and Germany (1990); and a permanent commission for the New York subway in 2007.
https://www.margaretlanzetta.com/
In Margaret Lanzetta’s digital series, titled Famous Ornament, photographs of Victorian botanical prints are juxtaposed with photographs of Japanese sakura: cherry blossoms: real, artificial and pop. In the work, nature is revered, questioned and mimicked. The Victorian botanical prints reveal the colonial exploitation of newly acquired territories with a simultaneous scientific celebration of exotic flora and fauna. In Japan, cherry blossoms embody narratives of both spirituality and nationalism. Famous Ornament examines this cultural exploitation of plants by nations and illuminates opposing threads embodied within Buddhism, colonialism and the field of economic botany. A selection of fourteen images from the larger Famous Ornament series will be on exhibit.
