Bonny Leibowitz
Statements for each body of work can be found with accompanying portfolios under "Work" or as a PDF here.

Artist Statement

I produce 3-D objects and installations to question concepts surrounding stability, the truthiness of images, and the meaning we assign to things. My work is composed of fractured facades built on ideas of nature and environment. I utilize tree parts, salvaged metal, fake grass and photography as projected illusions. The installations are substitutions for reality and reveal a history of prescribed notions and curated belief systems.

The work consists of sculptures I call hybrid objects, composed of natural and manufactured materials collected on West Texas day trips and from neighboring streets and scrap yards. I also document the ravages of tornadoes, droughts, flooding, and demolition sites printing the images on wall-sized sheets of aluminum, film, and paper. I then cut, heat, and reconstruct these large prints into facsimiles—pictures of nature peeling away from the walls and floor and as stand-alone structures. 

The inclusion of salvaged parts began after I happened upon an active demolition site. The scene reminded me of a war zone crossed with an amusement park. The poetic elegance of the mangled steel and the brutal destruction of the façade sharpened my awareness of the land’s ravages and the inextricable entanglement of nature, culture, and industrialization. I photographed the site and collected debris — processes and materials that have since become integral to my work.

The installations function as likenesses of nature, where the distinction between reality and representation erodes over time and the veil between out there and in here, the expected and the unexpected, continually thins. The work is an examination of connections, contradictions, and possibilities.