LISA SIGAL

"Ramshackle"

"Institutional"

"On the Rooftop"

"Limits Returning"

"Architectural Shadows"

courtesy Frederieke Taylor Gallery www.frederieketaylorgallery.com

 

JL:   Did you fabricate the sheetrock walls inside the landlord's space, or were they a part of the structure of the  building?  If so, do you think that creativity and destruction are both sides of the same coin and has your landlord expressed his/her views about you dismantling the walls for artistic and political purposes?

LS:  The sheet rock that I dismantled was part of the structure of the building. The studio had been ours for years and in that time many people reconfigured the space.  My landlord would have been happier had I taken more walls as he was planning to demolish and remodel the studios and rent them as residential lofts. I didn't talk to my landlord about politics or art at the time.

JL:   Do you think it is an accurate or fair assessment for one to perceive your "Ramshackle" piece as a blurring of the distinctions between "traditional" or "post modern" abstract painting and conceptual installation sculpture?  

LS:  My intention when making the piece was to blur the distinctions between the private space where a creative process occurs, a space that one feels is one's own and a public space.  I wanted to dismantle the walls of my studio, where I was being evicted after seventeen years, and take them with me.   I thought the gesture had meaning both personally and politically. Artists are often the first to move into transitional or industrial areas, bring new commerce and then get priced out.  I was desperate to let go of this studio and relocate.  So I did just that, I brought my walls with images painted on them of an urban landscape of sorts and leaned my sheetrock against a sheet rock wall that had been built in the gallery space.  Then I  continued painting, wondering as I painted on the gallery's walls, pipes, into the windows, window shades and on the doors if by painting an illusion on the architecture if the physicalness of the walls would in fact disappear when all surfaces became part of my painting. Would the room disappear as my physical physicalness of the walls would in fact disappear when all surfaces became part of my painting. Would the room disappear as my physical studio did?  What interests me about painting is that a painted space is not real.