Laura Lappi was born (1979) and raised in Finland. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts in The Netherlands and currently lives and works on the cusp of Brooklyn and Queens.
Lappi is interested in observing and examining how architecture and spatial environments influence our perceptions and affect reality; in particular, her focus is on the experience and emotional charge of different places and the fluid boundaries between reality and fiction. Her sculptural practice explores the relationship between physical spaces, man-made structures, and the human mind - the psychogeography of places.
The starting point of her work usually comes from a real, existing location, which she explores by researching its history and geography. Based on these places, she creates sculptures and site-specific installations, using photography and videography as a means to document them. In her recent works, she has been using charred wood. Dark, silky, and pitted surfaces unify simple geometric shapes. Irregular pentagons, triangles, trapezoids and circles intersect in ways that give structural integrity to the sculptures while creating a hypnotic visual rhythm. The charred material itself has an agency. The passage of time, loss and remembrance are encompassed within this blackened material that has been transformed through the act of burning.
Lappi often includes light as an element in her work, as it is an inherited aspect of architecture and space, intangibly connecting them to time and the cycles of nature. She is interested in exploring how light changes and influences the perception of forms in different materials, transcending physical, hard shapes, transforming them into a soft play of shadows and illumination.
In her projects Lappi wants to trigger a sense of bewilderment, uncertainty, and mystery by fabricating unexpected situations, shifting meaning and the viewer’s point of view to open a new sensitivity to our surroundings. Important themes within her work include historical memories, decay and destruction, and emotions such as loneliness and yearning.