Los Ojos is pleased to announce Lara Nasser’s one-woman show, Bait and Switch. The show opens on Friday, September 16 and continues through October 23.
Nasser’s sculptures playfully explore concepts of social anxiety, narcissism, and isolation with humor and wit. In many of Nasser’s sculptures, familiar materials like resin and cast plaster fractiously combine with iridescent plastic, wigs, fake plants, and hand-painted hardware from home improvement stores to create exuberant assemblages.
When discussing her sculpture, Nasser cites the Hawthorne Effect, in which productivity studies on factory workers temporarily increase output, only to have output slow when the studies end. In this case, the sculptures are “on their best behavior” simply because they’re under observation in the panopticon of the gallery.
Also included in the show are several small paintings that draw inspiration from technical diagrams, Google Image search results, and stock clip art. By reducing commonplace images to simple geometries, Nasser simultaneously obscures her source material and opens the door for multiple readings of each painting.
Lara Nasser received her BFA from the American University of Beirut and holds an MFA from Pratt Institute. She lives and works in Brooklyn.