Lee Materazzi

Instagram: @leematerazzi

Website: http://leematerazzi.com

Bio: Lee Materazzi (born Fairfax, VA) from Miami, FL now living in San Francisco, CA. In 2005 she received her BFA from Central St. Martins in London. Materazzi uses her body as a medium alongside color and texture, at times responding to remnants of material or work left by her children in the studio. Her compositions are off-kilter and investigate autonomy — rejecting acceptable social norms that regulate the human body. Materazzi’s works are considered sculpturally, but exist only temporarily. She documents what she creates with medium format photography to preserve it. Her work has been shown internationally and is a part of numerous public art collections including The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, The Sagamore Collection, the Scholl Collection at World Class Boxing and The Perez Art Museum where she was Included in “My Body My Rules”.

Statement: When visiting her studio it wasn't the mess that struck me as extraordinary but the size of the chairs. Materazzi shares her studio with her two young daughters, Mia, 12 and Brook, 9. In conversation, she consistently refers to the studio as ours. The tone with which she says this is important. It’s not said as generous platitude. It's a matter of fact. Their drawings and sculptures migrate in and out of Materazzi’s camera frame. Other times, their discarded or in-progress experiments inform the sculptures and sets Materazzi builds for her documented performances. Their uninhibited presence fills the otherwise silent space of tedium that takes place between the inception of a good idea and its execution. Where one’s work ends and the other’s begins isn’t obvious. Mess, play, success, and failure commingle throughout their inadvertent collaborations. In her portraits, Materazzi objectifies not just her body, but the precarity of its nature. Nipples, noses, knees, the small people she grew inside of her and the messes they’ve made on the ground are neither daft nor holy but both, simultaneously, in equal measure. Spanning the gamut from erotic to abject, the photographs and sculptures on view overlap with experiences of parenthood, divorce, the pandemic, the cultural amnesia that followed, and a standard sense of dailiness. Shared among them is a sense of urgency, a sensation that feels big and small at the same time—the way a paper cut throbs.