Exploring The Material World,
Denise Taylor,
September 18, 2008.
For Lisa Kellner, the question is the role of facades, be they personal or political. In her Untitled, (The Emperor Has No Clothes) (which itself has a façade in the title), balloon like forms made of silk organza hang in the air in clumps. Together, they form a flimsy barrier, a façade that is both alluring for its lightness and colors, but repulsive for its dripping metastasizing cellular form – just like a lie that can dazzle at first but then grow awful and out of control. Behind them, the Senate building is outlined with the text of two political speeches.
“I’m not taking a particular political view”, said Kellner, who has studios in New York and Virginia. “I’m just expressing a general frustration with the political climate…where it seems that if you just say something eloquently enough and with emotion, then it doesn’t matter what you then do.