robert lazzarini
October 25, 2003-January 4, 2004

Robert Lazzarini (born 1965) is an American sculptor whose works merge extreme realism with extreme distortion. Lazzarini recreates familiar objects to scale out of their original materials, while deforming them in seemingly impossible ways. The physical, psychological, and emotional implications of this distortion yield works that are both beautiful and unsettling. Appearing to expand and contract as viewers shift vantage points, the works seem to collapse upon themselves or, in the artist’s words, “slip toward their own demise.”

This first one-person museum exhibition of Lazzarini’s work features his major sculptures from 1997 to the present, including his two most widely recognized pieces, the installation of four skewed skulls seen in Bit Streams at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art (2001) and the warped payphone seen in the 2002 Whitney Museum Biennial. A selection of Lazzarini’s works on paper provide insight into his various sources of inspiration, including classical sculpture and portraits from life.

Lazzarini’s approach to sculpture combines traditional processes with advanced technology. He begins with a familiar object, from which he makes a digital scan. Using computer-assisted design programs, he subjects the image to two-dimensional distortions, then creates full-size three-dimensional models from these electronic files through rapid prototyping, a method of computer-generated model-making. These models form the basis for the final sculptures, which he produces from the same materials as the original objects and to the same scale, but incorporating the visually perplexing geometries.

The exhibition is organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.