Chicago-born Leah Guadagnoli begins her three-dimensional paintings by cutting individual sections from wood. She then paints, upholsters, or covers them in ground pumice, combining them to build a complex interplay between positive and negative space. Guadagnoli chooses her fabrics from patterns that recall the restaurant, hotel, and airport upholstery of the 1980s and 1990s. One of her smaller works, It Starts with L has the asymmetrical balance and commercially polished paint found in her larger reliefs. While Guadagnoli still considers these pieces to be paintings, her work draws from the vocabulary of interior and industrial design and maintains a familiar accessibility and an element of nostalgia.
Leah Guadagnoli
IT STARTS WITH L
2016
oil, acrylic, upholstery, pumice stone, molding paste, canvas, and polyurethane foam on archival coroplast
36 x 31 x 3 inches