Larissa Nowicki

Larissa Nowicki’s sculptures and weavings are formed from the printed pages of books, sliced and intricately woven to form new works that cannot be read in the traditional sense. Words are broken down, their letters spliced to create new sentences and letter forms, revealing fragments of public and private histories. Nowicki’s works, with their loosely assembled grids and reductive forms invoke the vocabulary of minimalism but originate from her personal and emotional experiences.

Nowicki’s sculptures are organic and disorderly, referencing the physical and bodily at an almost cellular level, through their imperfections and inconsistencies. Their irregularities mirror the imperfect underside of her woven works, as much a part of their make up as their precise and uniform fronts, but which are hidden from view. The fragments of type and images used by Nowicki in her textual pieces imply the process of thought, reason and receiving of information. Her densely woven grids of letters and words are punctuated randomly by blank squares, empty of print and highlighted- silent and reflective moments within the noise of daily thought.

Nowicki trades upon the vulnerability of her material. The thin strips of shredded paper are delicate, but once densely woven together have all the resilience of a piece of fabric. Nowicki’s meticulously crafted pieces invite reflection on the processes and material of cultural production, her use of repetition, neutral surfaces and simple geometric forms revealing an engagement with Modernism. Nowicki’s works finely balance their contradictions – order with disorder, imperfection with precision and stability and control within moments of complete vulnerability.

Education
2006: MA Communication Art and Design, Royal College of Art, London, UK
1993: BA, Graphic Design, Rhode Island School of Design, USA

Solo Exhibitions
2009: ‘In Waiting’, Man&Eve, London, UK

Selected Group Exhibitions
2010: ‘Book Ends’, James Fuentes Gallery, NYC, USA
2009: ‘Illiterature’, Frumkin Gallery, Santa Monica, CA USA — ‘NADA Art Fair’, Miami Beach, USA
2008: ’8 1/2 × 11 / A4’, James Fuentes Gallery, NYC USA — ‘Illiterature’, LIMN Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA USA — ‘RISD NYC Biennial 2008’, Brooklyn, NY USA — ‘Group Exhibition of Gallery Artists’, Man&Eve Gallery, London
2007: ‘Paper-thin worlds’, Man&Eve, London, UK — ‘Storytelling’, Man&Eve, London, UK — ‘Year_07 Art Projects’, London — ‘Aqua Wynwood art fair’, Miami, USA
2006: ‘Recent Graduate’s Work’, group show, Conran Headquarters, London — ‘The Show’, Royal College of Art — ‘Encyclopedia Typographica’, Royal College of Art
2004: ‘The Blue Room’, Royal College of Art

Prizes/Awards
2006: Augustus Martin Memorial Award, Innovation in Print Media, Royal College of Art
2002: Graphic Design Annual: ‘Giorgio Armani, Twenty-five Photographers’, and ‘Sugimoto Portraits’
2001: AIGA 365/22 – 50 Books/50 Covers: ‘Sugimoto, Theaters’
2000: Communication Arts Design Annual: ‘Giorgio Armani’ — I.D. Magazine: Annual Design Review: ‘Line Form Color, by Ellsworth Kelly’ — AIGA 365/21 – 50 Books/50 Covers: ‘Sugimoto, Portraits’

Publications
Author, ‘Who Needs a Client’, The Woodhill Park Critical Forum — Ed. Nick Evans, published by The Royal College of Art, 2007