William Lazos; Transforming the Everyday with Light
Realism or so-called Super-Realism, a movement that grew in the 1960s and 1970s evolved and grew in so many ways that there is no central tenet or generality that can apply to all the artists working in this genre or, for that matter Photo Realism. As opposed to Social Realism of the 1930s, Realism carried on from where Pop art began, embracing the symbols, cues and codes of post-War modernity and commercial culture, yet the essence of what a painter does when painting in this manner, is to engender an image, that, like a surface, presents an illusion of a so-called reality that is convincing.
William Lazos has, over the years developed a steady and dynamic body of work that is immersed in the culture of our times and that involves a process of painting that, while it looks deceptively simple, is fact intricate and multi-layered. Using base colours to build a background composition in monochrome, he will then add chromatic colours, and additional layers to build a depth into the realism. Paintings can take months to complete suing a process that combines airbrush and paintbrush. In the 1990s, Lazos would use a medium format camera that would produce a 6 x 6 centimetre transparency to produce more detail. These were projected onto canvas and became the compositional base for a given work of art.
In a painting like Mini-hoopla (2006-2010), we see a carnival scene re-enacted from the CNE. A child stands in the foreground turned away from the viewer. What is interesting in this work is the fusion of imagery from advertising, signage that merges with realistic details. The work is comparable in this to Robert Cottingham’s ‘Kresges’ (1984) in that the artist plays with representation, signage, and reflections of light. All this builds a dream-like illusion. In the same way, Lazos causes us to question what it is in fact we are reading.
‘Pinwheels III’ is a powerful and well executed hyper-realist work, that establishes its tension using simple devices such as a series of childrens’ tiny model cars, reflective and flashy pinwheels, a coffee cup and hazy background effect. In fact, though a “still life” this piece is all about light, and dematerializes the objects, rendering them into a context whose very nature is decontextualized, questioning what is ultimately “real”.
‘Lollipop’ (2000) has another CNE amusement park scene, a ride with geometries of a Ferris wheel in the background, then spiral arms of another ride, while we see children suspended in motion in the air, and a blue background sky. ‘Scrambler’ pursues similar effects. In ‘Rainbow’ (1989) the standing figures all project into this scenic tableaux much as Richard Estes does with his painting. ‘Stuntman’ (1988) , on a motorcycle, has a near cinematic flair and captures the aura of the fairground spectacle with great capacity. ‘Licorice Jar’ (1985) is reminiscent of Janet Fish’s realist paintings but has a stronger Pop feel both compositionally and in terms of its choice of materials to paint.
The portraits like ‘JJ’ (2006), ‘Tanya III’, or ‘Krystal III’ (2003), carry something of the stark full bodied portraiture of Chilean Claudio Bravo, for there is something close to sculptural in the way these portraits treat their subjects, editing them down visually to its essence. Dorota (2010) with a dark haired woman with bright red lipstick facing a skull has something of the macabre character of Audrey Flack’s intense investigations of realism as an expose of painting itself.
Inspired by Andy Warhol, who once said if you did not touch an American Supermarket for 50 years it would become a museum due to the nostalgia of the commercial iconography, Lazos recent Supermarket series integrates scenes of the everyday onto the flat surface canvas plane. The very ordinariness of these scenes, extemporizes them and brings the ordinary into the altogether different context of artwork. Accessible, Lazos’s art captures something uncommon, for it challenges the mainstream mannerism of our era, instead bringing painting back to the reality it derives from.
Born in Cairo Egypt, William Lazos has likewise worked in commercial illustration and packaging design projects, something that, like Pop painter James Rosenquist has only added a stronger character to the mural projects that are a significant part of his artistic production. While some of these projects were featured in books such as Murals on Huge Public Surfaces Around the World, and Mural Art (Vol. 3), one of his best-known projects involved working on six murals for the American abstract painter Frank Stella at the Princess of Wales theatre in Toronto. Another mural titled ‘Tom Thomson’s Algonquin, October 1915’ was made for the Huntsville Civic Centre/Algonquin Theatre. Lazos has also collaborated with the Cree Native Amerindian artist Rebecca Baird on murals at the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (2002) and the Queen West Health Centre (1997).
For the way he selects his subjects, Lazos introduces social and cultural scenarios into his art. Alternatively, he captures icons of the everyday with a flair for the magic of what still life painting can do when pushed to its limits. Lazos has a flair for capturing scenarios we can all identify with. While these works are comparable to photography, the way Lazos works with the surfaces of his subjects builds a unity into each work brings them to another level. He binds it all together with light.
BORN
Cairo, Egypt.
EDUCATION
1983 O.S.S.D. - George Vanier Collegiate Institute, Toronto.
1984-1988 A.O.C.A. - Ontario College of Art, Toronto.
AWARDS
1987 Stanley Furnival Tuition Scholarship, Ontario College of Art.
1992 1st Place Portraiture, National Fine Art Competition.
1997 People's Choice Award, Juried Exhibition, Art Gallery of Peel.
EXHIBITIONS
1984-1986 Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, Nathan Philips Square, Toronto.
1987 An Exploration of Painting at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto.
1988 Protorealism I, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
1989 3rd Annual International Exhibition of Miniature Art, Del Bello Gallery, Toronto.
1989 Group Exhibition, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
1990 Group Exhibition, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
1991 Group Exhibition, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
1992 Group Exhibition, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
1993 Group Exhibition, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
1994 Group Exhibition, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
1996 Group Exhibition, Bruce R. Lewin Gallery, New York, USA.
1997 Here's Looking At Me, Kid, Artists Look At Themselves, Art Gallery of North York, Toronto.
1997 High Resolution Hyper-Realism, Low Art Gallery, Toronto.
1997 Group Exhibition, Bruce R. Lewin Gallery, New York, USA.
1999 Annual Holiday Special: Art Rental and Sales Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario.
2002 International Art Convention Airbrush Show, Milan, Italy.
2002 Wildlife: Art Rental and Sales Gallery, Art Callery of Ontario.
2002-2003 From Fine Art to Kitsch: A Celebration of CNE Art Since 1879, Market Gallery, South St. Lawrence Market, Toronto.
2003 Group Exhibition, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
2004 New Realism II, Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan, USA.
2004 Group Exhibition, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2004 Real Paintings, Gallery Moos, Toronto.
ART RENTALS
Artwork Exhibited In Art Gallery of Ontario Rental and Sales Gallery.
LECTURES/SEMINARS/TEACHING
2002 Don Valley Society of Artists 1999-2002 Art Starts Community Centre
2002-2003 George Brown College 2004 Toronto School of Art
COMMISSIONS
1993 Six Murals for Artist Frank Stella At the Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto. Painted over 100 murals in Toronto and beyond.
1997 Mural for Artist Rebecca Baird, Queen West Health Centre, Toronto.
2002 Mural for Artist Rebecca Baird, Greater Toronto Airport Authority, Toronto.
PUBLICATIONS
Cohen, Joel H. "Larger Than Life." Airbrush Action June 1996: 18-23.
Hume, Christopher. "None of This is Really Real." The Toronto Star 24 April 1997:C14.
Withers, John P. "The Painting On the Wall" Signs of the Times November 1999: 98-99.
Airbrush Art + Action, April 2003, pp. 4 - 16, 42, 43.
