STATEMENT OF WORK

Artist Statement

In her most recent work, Lisa Endriss culls daily newspapers for images that express human excess, eccentricity, irony and paradox. Her discoveries in the daily flood of contemporary communication owe much to chance. An image — say of an old woman driving a convertible with her dog — allows her to address the contradictions and absurdities of life. That photograph, for instance, accompanied a story about seatbelts for animals. In another, a woman seeking romance uses her Greyhound dog to advertise her personality to potential suitors. Or an animal trainer mauled by his tiger excuses the incident by saying, “Even tigers have bad days.” Of course, viewers are not aware of the back-stories behind the images — but Endriss invites them to speculate and wonder about the characters they’re encountering.

Endriss has populated her painterly images with a kind of circus of animals, humans or humans behind masks. For instance, celebrities Prince and Michael Jackson, who often hid themselves from fans, are depicted as ancient demi-gods. And Mexican Lucha Libre wrestlers cavort in other pictures; their performance identities are as carefully constructed as their fake fighting is choreographed. Even as Endriss playfully pokes fun at our contradictions, she also sees her images as cathartic. By holding a mirror to our human foibles, she allows us to laugh at and wonder about our complicated selves.