MARGARET LANZETTA

The Chanteuse and a Loaded Gun

1947 Palmer Avenue

Larchmont, New York 10538

914 834 8077 KBFA.com

The Chanteuse and a Loaded Gun

February 28, 2015 - April 11, 2015

All photography by Kevin Noble except as noted below.

Artist: above, Kamakazi aircraft, Yushukan Museum, Tokyo;

pages 15 (studio, Long Island City, page 20 (garden, Long Island City)

Images © Margaret Lanzetta, New York 2015

Catalogue design: Chris Welch

Cover image: Artist’s studio, Long Island City 2015

Frontspiece: detail, Nothing After Midnight, 2013, acrylic on paper, 18” x 24”

Cupcake Out the Window title courtesy of Judy Halebsky

K E N I S E B A R N E S F I N E A R T

MARGARET LANZETTA

The Chanteuse and a Loaded Gun

WAYS TO LEAVE HOME

The celebrated haiku poet Basho went on a writing

pilgrimage for 150 days. He walked rain and shine through

small towns and mountain passes. On that trip he wrote

the book Oku no Hosomichi, meaning an Interior, Narrow

Road, to evoke both a path to far away places, and his

journey of inner reflection. Basho wrote that he did not

leave home for this journey but rather that he made his

home in the journey. Lanzetta has also traveled to Kyoto,

Calcutta, Damascus, Rome, Jakarta, Manilla, Bangkok...

in a similar way. She has not tried to bring back images

of the exotic or the stunningly bright. She has endeavored

to root herself outside of the places she has known and in

that soil tried to grow.

Lanzetta’s work exists in a process of constant shift-

ing of place and point of view. There is an ongoing nego-

tiation and construction of how to breathe and live even

when the here is moving. Steeped in an insistent, physical

repetition, Lanzetta makes paintings in a mantra-like prac-

tice with infinite variables, subtle shifts and replete motifs.

This repetition, like a meditation practice, inscribes into

the body, shapes the body and through this cultivates the

mind. Her methods suspend assigned meaning and posi-

tion the work in a process of striving towards, rather than

setting it in a fixed destination or place. Lanzetta asks:

how do we give up the mooring? How do we uproot? How

can we see from a point outside of the place from which

we come? How do we see anything beyond a surface view

that pins down immediately into an erroneous translation?

In her work, Lanzetta creates a language, not just a

spoken language, but an immensely rich and complex

cultural palimpsest. This palimpsest encompasses the

physical and cultural learning that shapes our personal in-

teractions with one another and how we interpret not just

words, but body movements, physical gestures, colors,

patterns and proximities. Unsettling the binaries that we

normally use to structure meaning, her language creates

a multiplicity of new ways to know the world. Within her

process, beauty is not in the arrangement but in the in

between, after the letting go and before the landing. These

connections are of an artist to the world around her but

also have a space open for us to step into this process of

making, and through it to connect to the world and each

other.

J U D Y H A L E B S K Y

Judy Halebsky is the author of two collections of poetry, Tree

Line and Sky=Empty, both published by New Issues Poetry &

Prose. Her honors include Fellowships from the MacDowell

Colony, the Millay Colony and the Japanese Ministry of Cul-

ture. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, she now lives in

Oakland and teaches at Dominican University of California.

Essay reprinted from Pet the Pretty Tiger catalogue with permission from

the poet.

Cupcake Out the Window2015oil and acrylic on canvas56” x 40”

Itchy2013acrylic on paper18” x 24”

previous page, rightHalf Singing2015oil and acrylic on canvas56” x 40”

previous page, leftSniff Kiss2015oil and acrylic on canvas56” x 40”

Chanteuse2015oil and acrylic on canvas36” x 75”

previous page, rightThe Scent of Water2015oil and acrylic on canvas56” x 40”

opposite,Opposite Temperature Zones2015oil and acrylic on canvas62” x 52”

previous page, leftStar Card2015oil and acrylic on canvas56” x 40”

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall2013acrylic on paper18” x 24”

bottom,Colony Collapseacrylic on paper18” x 24”

SIMPLE EXOTICS

Nature as symbol, inspiration and eclipser of culture is a

persistent, insistent theme in Margaret Lanzetta’s work. In

Simple Exotics, a polite phrase for invasive species, Lan-

zetta re-examines sakura, iconic Japanese cherry blos-

soms, through the lens of economic botany, the cultural

exploitation of plants by nations. Embodying both inspi-

rational and nefarious themes, the series illuminates con-

fl icting narratives within Buddhism, Western colonialism

and the fi eld of economic botany.

In the large-scale photographic work, Famous Orna-

ment, Lanzetta juxtaposes images of sakura, both real

blossoms and machine-made nylon or pop reproduc-

tions, with Victorian botanical drawings. Victorian botani-

cal drawings coexist as both early, fascinating studies for

medicinal plants as well as triumphant documentations of

exotic trophy specimens brought back to Europe through

western imperialism. In Japan, the transient sakura per-

sist as an enduring Buddhist metaphor for the fl eeting,

ephemeral nature of life. Altering this spiritual, aesthetic

association, sakura painted on the sides of the bomber

planes during World War II inspired pilots to “bloom as

fl owers of death.”

In the Simple Exotic paintings, the sakura, fragmen-

tated and splintered, bring to mind larger issues of envi-

ronmental degradation, genetic piracy and the dangers of

invasive species that threaten these and all other harbin-

gers of future springs. Tying together historical and global

threads, the Simple Exotics series considers the legacies

of scientifi c exploration, colonialism, spirituality and na-

tionalism within an increasingly shared and fragile world

environment.

Margaret Lanzetta, Tokyo 2013

Famous OrnamentVictorian botanical prints juxtaposed with photographs of Japanese sakura: cherry blossoms: real, fake and pop2013archival digital ink print42 images, each 13” x 16”96” x 90”, overall

Simple Exotics2013acrylic on paper18” x 24”

bottom,Super Flatacrylic on paper18” x 24”

MARGARET LANZETTA’S work draws in-

spiration from Buddhism, nature, Islamic architecture,

and sixties pop culture. Her work has been widely ex-

hibited in New York and abroad, most recently in the

2014 solo exhibition, Blues For Allah, at Heskin Con-

temporary, New York. Recent international showings

include Famous Ornament, (solo, 2013) at the Youkubo

Art Space in Tokyo and the Stockholm Independent

Art Fair: Super Market, with Le Cube Gallery, Morocco.

2012 included exhibits at Kenise Barnes Fine Art and

Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York; and Le Cube Gal-

lery and Jardin des Biehn Gallery, Morocco. In 2010,

a ten year retrospective was organized at the Cantor

Gallery, Massachusetts (with texts by John Yau and

Judy Halebsky). Lanzetta has also exhibited at Bernard

Toale Gallery, Boston, the ATP Gallery, London, and

the Queens Museum, New York. Reviews of her work

have been published in the Brooklyn Rail, Two Coats of

Paint, Art Critical, Muftah.org and the New York Times.

Lanzetta received an MFA from the School of Visual

Arts in New York and her first Fulbright Fellowship to

Germany in 1989. Newer awards include a second

Fulbright Senior Fellowship to India and Syria in 2008,

an MTA Arts for Transit Commission for the New York

subway in 2007, the British Academy in Rome Abbey

Painting Award in 2003, a Ucross Residency in 2010,

and several MacDowell Fellowships. Her work is in the

collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York;

The British Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum,

London; The Harvard Art Museum, Boston; the Yale

University Art Gallery, New Haven; the Hallmark Col-

lection, Kansas City; and several other corporate and

private collections. Lanzetta has traveled extensively

throughout Asia and has lived and exhibited in India,

Italy, Morocco and Japan. Margaret Lanzetta lives and

works in New York City.

in progress, February 2015