Purple Magazine
— S/S 2015 issue 23
Lizzi Bougatsos
sexy, badass, motherfucker of an artist
text by KIM GORDON
portrait by DEVYN GALINDO
Usually the word “heteronormative” is used in a context referring to gender. Lizzi’s art practice seems always to be working against the heteronormative of the art world. Her fluidity of movement, from her live performances to the performative art-making in a studio (borrowed, finagled, stolen, won), eventually comes to a reluctant rest and stillness within the sculptures or huddled compositions of found objects, adopted, disrupted, scooped up, and thrust into her sight. Movement. Made clear. Liquid glass, sexy on a piece of slate, on top of a piece of paper with a line drawn on it, impossibly flat, flat on flat. Working art residencies to gain studio space. You can see the Lower East Side in a sculpture or New Mexico or Miami. Her latest landing is Elaine de Kooning’s old studio, clean, light, and smooth. A perfect setting for making glass-like sculptures that express and flow from one surface to another. The genetic imprint of Elaine de Kooning — good wishes, desire put in motion — is a good thing. The glass leg in a high-heel ice sculpture standing in a room, a silent body part, eventually to disappear, melting into the surrounding environment. Lick it, drink it, run your hands down the side quickly before it becomes nothing.
R.I.P Whitney, 2012, T-shirts and clothesline. Photo by Jason Mandella
YOUR HIGHNESS, I PRESENT A RAVE, 2012, Digital prints, wood, and neon tube. Photo by Jason Mandella
