APRIL 6 - MAY 14, 2016

Opening Reception with the Artist
Wednesday, April 6, 6 - 8PM

Artist Talk
Saturday, April 9, 10:30AM-12PM

Southern Comfort Gallery (SOCO Gallery) is pleased to present Orange Sunshine, the latest body of work by New York based artist Robert Lazzarini. SOCO Gallery is located at 421 Providence Road in Charlotte, North Carolina. An artist reception will take place on April 6 from 6 - 8PM. The reception is free and open to the public.

Lazzarini’s work challenges basic perceptual tenets and interrupts the viewer’s habituated processes of visual recognition. In his first exhibition with the gallery, the artist continues his exploration of silkscreen paintings based on appropriated media and press photos of the actress Sharon Tate. The artist conflates photographic images with interference patterns, which complicates them visually and creates an indeterminate legibility. The image of the actress appears to occupy a shallow space within the picture that at times oscillates and dissipates as the viewer approaches, requiring the viewer to physically move around the image in order to make a visual purchase.

The phenomenology of viewing reveals the limitations of what is seeable and suggests the failings of cognitive recall.  Working with notions of memory, Lazzarini’s paintings at once memorialize the actress as well as obscure her.  The images reference the space of emotional memory, a type of retrieval that is more persistent than non-emotional memory.  Here, Lazzarini connects the indistinct reading of her features with the actress’s actual fading from our collective conscious.

Robert Lazzarini (B. 1975, American)

Lazzarini’s sculptures and paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally since 1995 and are included in major collections such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; the Mint Museum, Charlotte; the Newark Museum, Newark; and The Toledo Art Museum; Toledo. The artist was the Knight Alumni Artist in Residence at The McColl Center, Charlotte in 2015. The artist lives and works in New York, New York.