Artist Interview: IN CONVERSATION WITH LISA STEFANELLI
Artist Interview: IN CONVERSATION WITH LISA STEFANELLI
In Lisa Stefanelli’s latest series, "Fighting Birds”, she/they uses uncomplicated, traditional materials to delve deeper into her/their exploration of relationships and human co-existence. Her/their work celebrates both the unity and conflict of the parallel lives we live as a population. According to Stefanelli, “My work always attempts to draw at least a bit of intangible fascination…such as trying to observe the movement of clouds, or smoke.”
“These battles depicted in this series occur with no gravity to interfere with the chaos. Much like human altercations, they defy gravity, and they defy observation.” - Lisa Stefanelli
Lisa Stefanelli is an artist living and working in New York City and Easton, Pennsylvania. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design and received her degree in 1989. She has been a practicing artist for the last three decades.
“The underlying pursuit of my studio practice is to examine the possibility of being simultaneously involved and uninvolved in the complexity of all of our relationships, both animate and inanimate. Elements of the environments we inhabit—signage, sound/music, advertising, and popular culture (basically the cultural clutter of our lives)—are primary in informing the paths and trajectories of the works’ visual language. The work is elaborate and complicated while concurrently yearning to avoid the entanglements it embodies. And yet there is a joy in the confusion we live in. My practice chases that joy.”
-Lisa Stefanelli (2019)
Most recent solo exhibitions include Robischon Gallery, Denver, Colorado, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, Penn, Pierogi Gallery, NYC, Robischon Gallery, and Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, California. She has work in the collections of the United States Department of State, Washington DC, The West Collection, Oaks, PA, The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, MA, The Mondstudio Collection at the Kunstmuseum, Berne, Switzerland, The Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY and The Wynn Collection, Las Vegas, NV.
A short video on this artist and her practice in her studio can be viewed at: http://bit.ly/2pNd9Da
Q: Why the use of traditional materials in this series?
I utilize the materials that serve the idea of the piece.
This series required a degree comfort for me to accomplish it. The traditional materials of gauche and paper provided that comfort.
For the sake of any piece’s clarity, I sometimes need to return to tradition and familiar comfort in the studio. Being of Generation X, I am most likely not alone in this position of longing for the basic clarity of tradition.
Lisa Stefanelli in her studio in 2024
Q: What is the prevailing concept of this series?
It is about violence.
The conflicts we live in each day…how we are wired to fight.
Fighting Birds illustrates, quite visually, the negotiations we have with our families and communities, the relationships with our parents and our friends and our fellow citizens.
Whether we are aware of it or not, we do strive always to live peacefully with the people we love, the people we scorn, and those we have yet to meet.
Lisa Stefanelli in her studio in 2024
How does it relate to the other work?
I am a self-proclaimed aestheticist in pursuit of capturing the complexities of human nature. This series, Fighting Birds, is no exception.
The inclusion of aesthetics in the work makes the content less difficult to access.
Relationships in general, and the conflicts that exist within them have always been a fascinating concept to me.
There is density and complication in the world we live in, but there is also joy and fascination. My practice chases the joy.
Lisa Stefanelli in her studio in 2024