Goelet Gallery

Lisa Breznak

Serious Play

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As a celebration of the newly recreated Hammond Garden chess board, Serious Play is a solo exhibition of hand-made chess sets and individual sculptures.

Lisa Breznak is a sculptor who often works in miniature. Displayed singularly or in multiples as larger installations, her work creates a personal and extended narrative of the joys and pitfalls of modern life and demonstrates that beauty, humor, ideas, and significance are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
 

In this series she has turned to the concept of chess as a symbol of our turbulent times of violence, conflict, and class divide. For centuries chess has been a game of war and
conquest. However, in 1300, a Dominican monk, Jacobus de Cessolis, used chess as an
analogy to teach a new social order of the equality of all people, and the necessary interaction and interdependence of nobility, merchants, farmers, and common folk for a successful and fully functioning society. His book of sermons was popular for more than two centuries. It also changed the rules and moves of the game, giving pawns more power and potential to win.

 

Celebrating this second narrative of diversity and cooperation, each of the installations
of 32 sculptures is presented as a traditional set.
 

Ms. Breznak exhibits internationally and has had artist's residencies in the US, Spain, and Japan, and a solo exhibition at the Hudson River Museum, NY. She has lectured on her work at Seika University, Kyoto Prefectural University, and the Kyoto International Group, Japan, the Dorsky Museum as well as Exit Art in NYC, and at the Aldrich Museum, among others. She was a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in the inaugural six month Mark Artists program, and is the recipient of two NYFA Special Opportunity Stipends.
 

Having degrees from Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY and Goddard College, she also did post-graduate studies at Parsons School of Design.
 

Ms. Breznak lives and works in Peekskill NY.
 

Photo caption: Lisa Breznak, Traditional Twist, clay, paint, 22k gold leaf, palladium leaf  - Photo credit: Howard Goodman