November 16 through December 14, 2007
Stephen Lapthisophon: Marinetti’s HeartArtist's reception Friday, November 16, 2007.
Marinetti’s Heart was an installation and artworks by Stephen Lapthisophon. He created a site-specific installation incorporating text, found objects, sound, light, and drawing. The piece investigated the power of art to create feelings of discomfort, violence, and loss. The artist used the work of Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti as a starting point. The installation evoked early 20th century Modernist art to question the implied progressive ideals of art making of the that time. The entire installation was created in the day and a half before the opening.
Lapthisophon is a multimedia artist and writer whose work addresses questions of language, history and cultural memory. Recent solo exhibitions include Static at Conduit Gallery in Dallas, Texas (2003), With Reasonable Accommodation at Gallery 400 in Chicago (2002) and Defense d’Afficher at TBA Exhibition Space (2000), also in Chicago. His work has also been seen at Artists Space in New York, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and in Chicago at Gallery 312, N.A.M.E. and Randolph Street galleries. Lapthisophon is also represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
In March 2004, Lapthisophon’s work was seen in the Chicago Loop in the Open Studio Program working publicly on a temporary site-specific wall painting as well as a 90-minute video work, “The Failure of Modern Politics.” In addition the installation with sound Amanuensis (I Hear a Symphony) was presented at the College of DuPage in Glen Elyn, Illinois—with a catalogue essay by Richard Brettell. An interview with the artist appeared on the Chicago Public Radio program “848” in March.
In January 2004 his sound piece “Anonymity” could be heard on State Street in Chicago as part of the public installation “Sound Canopy” sponsored by the Hyde Park Art Center. As a resident artist at the Experimental Sound Studio in 2002, Lapthisophon produced the audio CD “the bells,” a soundtrack to his visual novel Hotel Terminus published by WhiteWalls the previous year. He has also been a guest lecturer in the “Artists Connect” series at the Art Institute of Chicago as well as at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he earned an MFA in 1979.
In 2005 Lapthisophon was a visiting artist in Dallas TX , in residence at South Side on Lamar and teaching at The University of Texas at Dallas in the department of Art & Humanities. During that stay he participated in group exhibitions at The Casket Factory with the art collective Oh6 and an exhibition of drawings at Brookhaven College. Solo exhibitions in Dallas at McKinney Avenue Contemporary and IR Gallery were followed by the exhibition Strategy at Conduit Gallery. Returning to Chicago, Lapthisophon was artist in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago where he produced the installation My Tradition My Heritage My Voice. Lapthisophon’s most recent sound piece “Shady Aftermath” was produced in 2005 at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago.
The Nu-Art Series is a Not-for-Profit Arts Organization.
