RICHMOND, VA.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts presents today “Robert Lazzarini,” on view through Sunday, January 4, 2004. Robert Lazzarini (born 1965) is an American sculptor whose works merge extreme realism with extreme distortion. Lazzarini recreates familiar objects (to scale) out of their original materials, while deforming them in seemingly impossible ways. The physical, psychological and emotional implications of this distortion yield works that are both beautiful and unsettling. This first one-person museum exhibition of Lazzarini’s work will feature his major sculptures from 1997 to the present, including his two most widely recognized pieces, the installation of four skewed skulls seen in “Bit Streams” at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art (2001) and the warped pay phone seen in the 2002 Whitney Museum Biennial. A selection of Lazzarini’s works on paper will provide insight into his various sources of inspiration, including classical sculpture and studies of the human anatomy.

Lazzarini’s sculptural process begins with familiar objects, which he photographs and scans into a computer. Using computer-design programs, he subjects the images to radical distortions and then transforms the virtual objects into full-size, three-dimensional models through rapid prototyping, a method of computer-generated model making. These models form the basis for the final sculptures, which he produces with traditional sculpting methods (carving, casting, coloring), to scale and from the same materials as the original objects. Appearing to expand and contract as viewers shift vantage points, the works seem to collapse upon themselves or, in the artist’s words, “slip toward their own demise.” The museum gratefully recognizes generous gifts from The Council of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Fabergé Ball Endowment, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and the Peter Norton Family Foundation, along with those of individual, foundation and corporate donors.

The exhibition was organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It was curated by John Ravenal, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.