Robert Lazzarini Teacup 2003 Peter Norton Family Christmas Project

Robert Lazzarini is best known for his sculptures of common objects in which detailed craftsmanship is combined with precise illusionistic distortion. Scaled to the size of the original object and using the same materials, Lazzarini creates versions of guns, knives, brass knuckles, chairs, telephones, telephone booths, and skulls, among other things. Factuality is a theme that runs throughout his imagery, as is visual perception and how that perception is constructed in both the mind of the viewer and in the physical world. “I am concerned with the direct relationship between the viewer, the original object (the role of memory), and the sculpture (the object reconfigured),” Lazzarini explains. Robert Lazzarini received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY in 1990, and continues to live and work in New York City today. The sculptures and paintings of Robert Lazzarini (b. 1965, New Jersey) have been exhibited nationally and internationally since 1995 and are included in major collections such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; the Newark Museum, Newark; and The Toledo Art Museum; Toledo. The artist was the Knight Alumni Artist in Residence at The McColl Center, Charlotte in 2015 and exhibited at the Mint Museum, Charlotte and SOCO Gallery, Charlotte in 2018, the USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa in 2019, and Lowell Ryan Projects, Los Angeles in 2021.