Exploring The Work Of Lori Nozick, Where Architecture, Archeology & Evolution Evoke Multilayered Narratives Across History And Time

Artist Lori Nozick was born in the northeast US, and lived in New York for 25 years. She currently lives in Miami and has a studio in the Fountainhead Program in Miami, Florida. She holds a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art, and an MFA from Pratt Institute.

The artist has exhibited her work in galleries and museums, done site-specific installations, been awarded public art commissions, and has received international, national, state, and foundation grants and fellowships for her work, including the Pollack Krasner Foundation Grant, an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Grant, and numerous public art commissions. “Luce Et Vita Universae”, a NYC% For Art Commission was named one of the “Best Public Art Projects of the Year 2006” by the Americans For the Arts and the Public Art Review.

Nozick’s work is both highly tactile and deeply referential, with materials evoking our primal earth, to structures we create, to our history and traditions – both specific and universal, existing outside a fixed moment. A tension and balance between security and impermanence echo in the materials chosen and the forms created, which offer a mixing of both hidden narrative and exposed layers, examining ongoing cycles of cohesion and disintegration.

Works can seem solid (though they may have hidden vulnerabilities), permeable, ancient and transient, capturing the inherent dynamics of human structure and social and environmental change, both physically and symbolically.

In 2009 Nozick created a monumental salt sculpture known as ‘Sal, Non Sal 124‘ in Key West, Florida. It was a temporal site specific sculpture installation at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park comprised of 3,600 salt blocks and salt mortar, which consisted of three sections – a tower, column and a wall, evoking an archaeological site.

“One prevalent characteristic is a sense of mutability and, often, decay and dissipation. For example, in Lori Nozick’s work, “Sal, Non Sal 124″, constructed entirely of salt bricks in the form of a castle-type ruin. Throughout the exhibition, the ghostly salt structure will slowly erode and dissolve, a kind of melancholic collapse that simultaneously evokes a sense of the sublime.” –Shamim Momin, (former) Associate Curator, Whitney Museum.

Nozick was a Featured Artist at SCOPE Art Fair 2012 Miami, she was invited to create a monumental sculpture installation during Miami Art Week. The artist created an anti-architectural structure, ‘Miami Lighthouse‘, intended to evoke house and home, yet utilizing elements lacking their intended functionality: doors that are hung horizontally and above our heads, windows that don’t open, stairs that lead nowhere. The viewer was invited to enter and explore the space, and achieve a moment of contemplation questioning this “place”.

In these works, as art historian and critic Robert C. Morgan has written, “structure signifies an inventory of shapes and elements that pull together even as they move in different directions,” resonating as markers of visual memory.

Anti-architectural structures arise as temporary constructions. These often comprise materials that come from the place, site or local environment, including reclaimed architectural elements such as wood, metal, glass, cement, blocks of salt, pigments, impressions of leaves, animal skeletons, fossils, and solar-powered LED lighting.

Nozick is sought after to create unique art and design commissions for high profile residential and commercial projects; working with materials such as recycled or reclaimed wood, architectural elements, patina, colored acrylic panels, mirrors, lighting, and more.

Visit www.lorinozick.com to learn more about this fascinating artist, and connect on Instagram @lorinozickart / For sales, project inquiries, commissions or general information, please email: lnozickart@aol.com

Additional Press Links:
Wall Street International Magazine, Lori Nozick https://wsimag.com/art/9248-lori-nozick-dislocation
Art and Culture Center/Hollywood https://artandculturecenter.org/lori-nozick-walkabout