Graphite artist Laurie Lipton is a cultural phenomenon. Growing up in the 1970s, Lipton was told by her Carnegie-Mellon art school professors that figurative drawings went out with the Middle Ages and that there was no place for her pencil drawings in the modern, abstract art-engulfed world. Undeterred, Lipton taught herself to draw on her “off hours,” learning to copy the Flemish masters by creating a unique cross-hatching style that allowed for greater variation in tone and depth than in traditional drawing. Twenty years later, she emerged as one of the most prolific, original and mind-boggling realists of our time. One look at her pop culture scenarios—often monolithic in size and always molecular in detail—and your eyes literally spin trying to comprehend her extensive technicalities, not to mention her biting commentary on ego, fear, and consumption. In her latest exhibit, “Machine Punk,” Lipton climbs aboard the steampunk movement that is currently sweeping Britain (where she’s resided since 1986). It’s all about electrical madness, she says, the “veritable wasp’s nest of wires and sockets connecting a hoard of gadgets and doo-dads” that do not really make our lives any easier; in this show, she points out that her machines are entirely too complicated to do anyone any good, hindering and controlling instead of helping, a complete illusion of technology. Sounds familiar. (Stacy Davies)
What: Laurie Lipton’s “Machine Punk”
When/Where: Nov. 5–28; reception Nov. 5. La Luz de Jesus Gallery, 4633 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles.
Info: Call (323) 666-7667 or go to www.laluzdejesus.com. Free.
