robert lazzarini

 History Maker

Excerpted and revised from

Proposal for the US Pavilion, 2026 Venice Biennale

Artist: Robert Lazzarini

Commissioner and Curator: John B. Ravenal

INTRODUCTION

As the United States approaches its semi-quincentennial in 2026, questions about American identity, history, and values take on new urgency. The international community continues to grapple with its perception of the US, and the Venice Biennale provides a critical forum for articulating national values. There is a need for an artistic project that does more than just showcase talent—it must encourage critical engagement with American symbols and ideals in a time of great change.

The US Pavilion plays an important role in shaping perceptions of America abroad. Over 700,000 people from around the world visited the 2024 Biennale and millions more experienced it through virtual programs and televised, online, and print media. At a time when questions of American values are ever more central to national and international discourse, Lazzarini’s proposal for the US Pavilion embraces issues of American identity and history as its overarching theme.

Featuring works based on American objects from the sixteenth century to the present, the proposed exhibition undertakes a comprehensive historical sweep, evoking a four-century span that recalls the breadth of an encyclopedic American history museum.  At a critical moment in our nation’s history, when American ideals of democratic governance, social justice, and freedom of expression are under increasing pressure, Lazzarini’s meticulously created sculptures and prints create dynamic visual experiences that encourage viewers to revisit familiar but overlooked elements of collective American identity. Presenting his powerful works to Biennale visitors is an opportunity to engage a broad international audience in conversation about American history, identity, and values, and to display American ingenuity in the complex creation of these works themselves.

Lazzarini uses the evocative notion of “looking at symbols remembered” to describe the feeling his exacting recreations convey, with their careful attention to surface details and signs of wear and tear. From the start of his career, Lazzarini has made his works using the same materials as the source objects. His early violin (1997) uses flame maple, ebony, bone, and spruce, as does the Stradivarius original in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection. His payphone—a centerpiece of the 2002 Whitney Biennial—uses anodized aluminum, stainless steel, plexiglass, and silkscreened graphics, like the once-common New York City payphone. In finishing his works, Lazzarini adds patinas of age and use that further their authenticity. The result is marked factuality—a commonplace, everyday aspect that the artist considers a distinctly American quality.

Into this sense of heightened credibility and truthfulness, Lazzarini introduces his distinctive vocabulary of mathematical distortion. After scanning his selected images and objects, Lazzarini uses advanced computer programs to reshape their existing geometries with a variety of 3D modeling programs. This “aesthetics of math” ranges from compound planar distortions and compound sine waves to the use of gradient noise. In translating the final pattern back into the object’s original materials, Lazzarini often collaborates with artisans in different fields, including luthiers, seamsters, and a range of foundry operatives. This masterful combination of high-tech with the handmade results in works with a distinctly historical feel while being entirely of the present moment, collapsing distinctions between the historical and the contemporary.

Lazzarini conceived his proposal specifically for the US Pavilion—a Palladian-style building modeled after Monticello. Built in 1930, at a time when the United States was asserting itself more prominently on the world stage through art and diplomacy, the Pavilion’s Jeffersonian classicism symbolizes a distinctively American cultural identity. It is meant as an architecture of stability, tradition, and civic virtue. The artist’s proposal calls for maintaining the integrity and honesty of the original building. He views its restrained neo-classical façade, symmetrical floor plan, central rotunda, and traditional brick and limestone materials as an ideal context for the display of works about American history.

PROPOSED WORKS

eagle

eagle is based on the flag finial seen atop poles at US government buildings, military posts, and official ceremonies. At sixteen feet across, Lazzarini’s monumental enlargement—based on a Tiffany design used during the American Civil War—is his only work not adhering to the scale of the original source.

Representing strength and power since ancient Roman times, the eagle became the national symbol of the United States when Congress approved its use on the Great Seal in 1782. The US adoption of the golden eagle finial reflects the tradition of conveying imperium, or the right to command, through brilliant and noble imagery. The mathematical distortions and titled angle of Lazzarini’s eagle open the symbol to additional meanings.

lectern

Based on an anonymous seventeenth-century American example, lectern points to the central place of religion in early American history. As a generic form of early American church furniture, lectern represents the pulpit as the site of authority in the American colonies—both the voice of God and the power of the state. In Puritan New England, the pulpit was the focal point of the meetinghouse, which functioned as both church and civic hall.

The elevated height of lectern in the rotunda refers to the historical concept of the elevated voice: raised above the congregation, the pulpit’s height emphasized the lofty source of the message and the moral supremacy of divine law. Animated by mathematical distortion, Lazzarini’s lectern alludes to longstanding tensions in this dynamic.

George Washington

This sculpture is based on John Quincy Adams Ward’s 1883 monumental bronze installed in front of Federal Hall in downtown Manhattan, at the exact site where Washington took the oath of office as President of the United States. At over twelve feet tall, the sculpture’s scale conveys the power of the President and the authority and responsibility vested in the elected leader of the new Republic.

Lazzarini will recast the work at full size, in the original bronze. Altering the statue’s form using voxel modeling—based on small 3D cube-like elements similar to a pixel—Lazzarini’s transformation will both re-energize and defamiliarize a powerful but overlooked American icon, prompting fresh consideration in today’s political landscape.

American flags

The enduring symbol of American identity, the US flag is considered “a living symbol” because its form can be modified without losing authority. It has gone through twenty-six official changes since its adoption in 1777 by the Second Continental Congress. Departing from its rectangular shape through the introduction of compound sine waves, Lazzarini’s American flags convey an uncanny impression of motion: they seem to fluctuate as if energized with a unique tension or the possibility of change.

Lazzarini bases his wall-hung American flags on the official military funeral flag: the 9 ½ × 5-foot version specified by the US Government to drape the casket or accompany the urn of a deceased veteran. This choice underscores the special bond between the body and the American flag. Not only does it symbolize our body politic and the values of honor and duty, but through the almost mystical reverence accorded it, the flag has acquired the power to inspire the ultimate sacrifice.

cannon

The twelve-pounder Napoleon was the most widely used field artillery piece during the American Civil War. Today, original Napoleons are displayed at battlefield parks, historic museums, and outside government buildings such as the US Capital and statehouses. Lazzarini’s complex transformation of the Napoleon’s geometry reactivates this familiar artifact, highlighting its role in US history as a bulwark for the protection of American ideals. At the same time, using a cannon from Antietam as the model recalls the Civil War and that battle as the greatest loss of American life on a single day in history.

Waldseemüller map

The Waldseemüller map, created in 1507, is one of the most important maps in the history of cartography. Often called "America’s birth certificate," it is the first known map to use the name "America" to label lands of the Western Hemisphere. Like Lazzarini’s version, the original map was printed from twelve woodblocks and measures over eight feet wide overall.

Maps are inherently distorted, as they translate information from the physical world onto a flat surface. Lazzarini’s distortions underscore this reality, while the vertiginous quality suggests the trials of seafaring and exploration. The Waldseemüller map broke with a thousand years of geographic thinking by showing the Americas as an independent landmass, separated from Asia by an ocean. Lazzarini’s distortions increase the separation of the American from the rest of the world.

bear trap and an alligator

Displayed in the same room as Waldseemüller map, the sculpture bear trap and the print an alligator are counterpoints to the map’s commentary on the exploration of the New World. The untamed wilds of the American continent—whether the deep woods of the Alleghenies with their bears and wolves, or the wetlands of Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, and the Carolinas with their American alligators—posed ever-present dangers for settlers.

Displayed directly on the floor, and made unsettlingly animate by his alterations, Lazzarini’s bear trap conjures the harsh reality of man versus nature. The distortion in his print, an alligator, similarly evokes the early American frontier and the heroic efforts in overcoming its dangers and fears. The bear may also allude to Russia and the dragon-like alligator to China, set in relationship to the Waldseemüller map with its isolated America.

BIOS

Robert Lazzarini is widely considered one of the first artists to apply computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) to the fine arts. While digital processes now underlie many aspects of our daily lives and digital art is widespread, Lazzarini was one of the pioneers in this field. He continues to expand the limits of its creative potential and is known for his mathematical distortions of existing objects, which confuse visual and haptic space.

Robert Lazzarini exhibits nationally and internationally. He has been exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art, notably in Bitstreams (2001), an exhibition that defined early digital art, and the Whitney Biennial (2002). He has had solo exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2003), Mint Museum (2006, 2018), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2009), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2011), USF Contemporary Art Museum (2019), and others.

Lazzarini is in collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, Newark Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Mint Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Hood Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Denver Museum of Art, Speed Art Museum, Dakis Joannou Collection, and Museo Jumex.

John B. Ravenal is an independent curator and art historian. Most recently, he served as Executive Director of deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2015-20), where he initiated and led a successful merger with a regional land trust in 2019. Before that, he was the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (1998-2015), and Associate Curator of 20th-Century Art (1996-98) and Assistant Curator of 20th-Century Art (1991–96) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Ravenal earned his MA and MPhil in Art History from Columbia University. He served as the fourth President of the Association of Art Museum Curators (2009-11) and was a 2012 Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership. He was a member of the Association of Art Museum Directors from 2015-21. He serves on the boards of the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; the International Association of Art Critics; and the ICA, Richmond, VA.

Ravenal has organized numerous exhibitions, including Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch, which traveled internationally to the Munch Museum in Oslo in 2016. He curated Lazzarini’s first solo museum exhibition, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2003. He has also curated projects with Sol LeWitt, Xu Bing, Andy Goldsworthy, and Sally Mann, among others.