Spectacle of Power:
New Work by Jay Lizo
September 1 – 29, 2006
Organized by Dana Turkovic
Inspired mainly by DJ culture, Jay Lizo's paintings are an explosion of text, vibrant color and abstracted images. His obsession with mixing, sampling and phenomenology become focal point in most of his paintings and sculptures, referencing movies, books, and pop culture in general. Mostly taken from his immediate surroundings, such as geography or places with historical significance, text and images are collected and gathered, and beautifully remixed into one experience and one final form. Lizo's newest body of work is an even more intense study of text, type and the roots of slang and street talk. Dialogue from films such as Red Dawn and Fight Club provide his initial layer of images and color. Nothing is sacred or without comparison, layering the words of Nietzche with the poetics of Ice Cube, Lizo produces extremely detailed and decorative works. Writers such as Guy Debord, Dick Hebdige and Ludwig Wittgenstein, influence Lizo's process of choice and application, and always haunted by their words, Lizo builds architecturally around them. By taking images from different histories and remixing into a new context creates new dialogues for an absurd yet possible worldview as it reflects on ideas of Power. It's a collection of words and images that are related to some form of power, such as Remington's rifle, Robert McNamara's "Thoughts on War", Heart's typewriter, Delacroix's spears, Wu-Tang's lyrics on capitalism, Debord's text on the Situationists, and many others images culminate in the paintings and sculptures to immerse a viewer in a Spectacle of Power.
Born 1975 in Sarasota, Florida. Lives and works in Los Angeles. Lizo received his B.F.A. from Ringling School of Art and Design in 1998 and in 2005 he received his M.F.A. from University of California - Santa Barbara. He has shown in numerous group exhibitions including: High Desert Test Sites 5, Joshua Tree, CA, 2006; Supersonic, Los Angeles, CA, 2005; LA Tap - Curated by David Pagel, Melbourne, Australia, 2004; and Stray Show, Chicago, IL, 2003. This is Lizo's first solo exhibition.
