Kristi Lippire 'Color as Form'
Arthaus
OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION ON MARCH 6 AT 7:00 PM
The exhibition takes place in the year of the 130th anniversary of the birth of Varvara Stepanova
Fabrika presents a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist, talented sculptor and teacher Kristi Lippire. The project “Color as Form” is the result of the artist’s stay in Moscow, within the framework of Fabrika's program “Artist-in-Residence” in 2019.
During her stay at the residence, Kristi Lippire studied the works of the outstanding Soviet avant-garde artist, designer and representative of constructivism – Varvara Stepanova. Inspiration from the work of Varvara Stepanova grew into the artist's exploration of constructivism, an interest in modernist architecture and how its structural forms can be (re)shaped using color.
Kristi Lippire asks a question: what happens to architectural forms when we add colour to them? The artist collected a vast archive of photos (and made many of them on her own) of those architectural pieces that were created colourless – the BreezeBlock design elements of Modernism and geometry of Soviet Constructivism. Lippire isolates these design elements and creates patterns out of them in pieces that strike with the complexity of form, with the complication of colour. Being a Professor of colour theory, Lippire invites us to turn colour into a language to create a dynamic system where two coexisting codes – a form and a colour – could unfold in one abstract system.
In the works of Kristi Lippire, the gallery is saturated with colour and pattern allowing them to be their own subjective features within the complicated web of pragmatic urban design structures. These design elements toggle back and fourth from Los Angeles to Moscow, from contemporary urban features like manhole covers to constructivism’s unifying language of abstraction as seen in their use of shapes to create building designs and sculptural forms.
Lippire also references the early graphic and textile experiments of famous Soviet avant-garde artist and designer, Varvara Stepanova. Lippire looks to Stepanova’s textile designs, theatre sets and costume designs as a place where geometric design meets function in the most innovative ways. Looking back at the massive tradition of textile pattern production and posters, the exhibition features graphic works, textile pieces and weavings, by Lippire. Each one paying homage to the artist, Stepanova and the movement, Constructivism, that have long been influences in Kristi Lippire’s work.
Website of Kristi Lippire: https://www.kristilippire.com/
Curator of the residence program: Christina Pestova
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Kristi Lippire (California) received her BFA from California State University, Long Beach, CA (1998) and her MFA from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA (2002). She has taught at California State University at Bakersfield, University of California at Irvine, Riverside Community College and California State University at San Bernardino. Selected solo exhibitions include 21st Century Landscape: Reconstructing Identity , Bank of America Plaza, organized by Joie Lassiter Gallery, Charlotte (2007); Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, curated by Lynne Warren traveling to Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA and to Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC (2010); and Set Theory 1 – Roland Reiss, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA (2010), and many more.
