Lesley Bodzy is a sculptor and painter based in New York City and Houston. Her work explores the ways in which materiality can give form and visibility to psychologically complex experiences. Trauma, loss, and desire are recurring themes that emerge through material processes and a thoughtfully devised personal metaphorical language. 

She uses acrylic paint as a sculptural material. After pouring it out on plastic sheeting, she treats it with chemicals that allow her to manipulate, drape, rearrange and layer it. These experimental and intuitive gestures are performed as a way to simultaneously acknowledge and exorcise the past. 

Bodzy’s practice is steeped in a genuine fascination with materials and their expressive potential. She instigates the components of her works to commingle and conspire, allowing their malleability and resistance to point her towards a subject that emerges as part of a personal and meditative concentration. The delicate yet resistant surfaces create new and unpredictable cycles of associations and challenge assumptions around expressions of vulnerability, restraint, and strength.

 

Taking cues from pioneers of sculptural abstraction of the 1970s, Bodzy pursues compositions which highlight her interest in the imperfect and incomplete and often blur the categories of relief, sculpture, and painting. These more minimalist tendencies are often counterpointed by bold colors that dramatize each piece in order to draw attention to what is often concealed or barely perceptible in our lives. Though the work is biographical in essence, Bodzy favors open forms and underscores ambiguities and contradictions that position the viewer as not only a witness but as an integral co-author. 

 

Lesley Bodzy holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied at Mount Holyoke College, Hunter College, and the Art Students League of New York. Her work is represented by galleries in Houston, TX, Saugerties, NY, Williamsburg, VA, and Jersey City, NJ and has been exhibited widely across the United States and abroad. Past exhibitions include ChaShaMa and Sculptors Alliance in New York City, Holy Art Gallery in London, UK, Site:Brooklyn, Emerge Gallery in Saugerties, NY, the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT, the Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, PA, and the Meadows Gallery in Tyler, TX.