Elad Lassry is a Los-Angeles based artist whose practice is concerned with visual perception and the meaning of images in the 21st century. The artist is well known for his still lifes of fruit and vegetables, commercial goods and everyday objects, as well as his vivid portraits of people and animals. In addition the artist also frequently works with found images which he sources through textbooks, magazines, and film and photographic archives. At first glance, Lassry’s approach to these subjects and image genres appears to be relatively simple and straightforward, but upon closer investigation this easy recognition gives way to a sense that what is happening within the artist’s altered images and carefully-constructed studio photographs is in fact, highly complex.
This strategy of presenting familiar subjects, only to render them infinitely strange and impenetrable through a number of subtle gestures and interventions, is a prominent one within Lassry’s work that allows the artist to explore the nature of “pictures” and the visceral encounters they bring to bear. While these investigations arguably take their most vital form within the artist’s extensive body of photographs and a number of 16mm films, in recent years Lassry’s inquiry has expanded to consider the “picture-making” capacities of choreography and works that are more physically-dimensioned and sculptural. This exhibition is the first survey of Lassry’s work in Canada and includes works produced by the artist over the last ten years.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1977, Elad Lassry moved to Los Angeles in 1997 and studied art at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of Southern California. His work has been the focus of solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, Kunsthalle Zürich and the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan among others and included in numerous international group exhibitions.