Erika Lizée is Los Angeles-based artist who specializes in site-specific, illusion-based installations. Her works, done with acrylic paint, often look like portals to another dimension thanks to their unusual shapes and 3D effect.
Recently, Lizée did an installation at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum called “Seed of Life” that perfectly captures the essence of her creative process. It shows a cluster of blue strings being sucked into a vortex that “opened” in the wall. But the work is open to interpretation since it can also be viewed as an unknown entity using the portal to cross into our world.
According to Lizée, the illusion part of her work is important for sparking a sense of wonder in the viewer as well as giving them a feeling of uncertainty.
“I imagine gallery walls as thresholds between different realms or states of existence, between the visible and the invisible, between this physical plane we inhabit and otherworldly planes beyond our awareness,” the artist shares on her website.
Lizée’s other portals have “opened up” in galleries and art centers across the United States, including San Pedro’s Angels’ Gate Cultural Center, Oxnard’s Carnegie Art Museum Studio Galleries, and Lancaster’s Museum of Art and History.
