MONIQUE LUCHETTI

ONE FOR SORROW, TWO FOR MIRTH

May 20 - July 2, 2022

Virtual Exhibition Opening:

Friday, May 20, 2022 at 11:00 AM

Lola Shepard is pleased to present ONE FOR SORROW, TWO FOR MIRTH, an online solo exhibition featuring 25 works on paper by MONIQUE LUCHETTI.  The online exhibition will be viewable to the public beginning on Friday, May 20, 2022, at 11:00AM and will run on the website from May 20 to July 2,2022. 

In ONE FOR SORROW, TWO FOR MIRTH, Monique Luchetti draws our attention to the symbiotic relationship between humans, the animal kingdom, and our natural world.  Using her artwork to communicate and address the importance of environmental and animal conservation, Luchetti has developed a body of work depicting bird study-skins (as the bird specimens are called) from ornithology collections she photographed.  Her mixed media artwork takes an unflinching look at the harmful effects of human intervention on the world and, as the artist states, serves “as a meditation on the contradiction inherent in our rush to collect, classify, and catalog the world, even as we go about destroying it.”  

Utilizing her photographs as a reference, Luchetti skillfully renders the taxidermied birds in graphite pencil on Nepalese lokta paper.  In portraying the winged creatures as they lay in their unnatural position -on their back, usually with their head thrown back and feet crossed in repose- one is reminded of the post-mortem photography of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  With gesso, watercolor, and gouache, she then overlays colorful abstractions or flora on the most vulnerable yet powerful location on their body - the heart center and solar plexus.

Monique Luchetti lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  She received her M.F.A. in Painting from Ohio State University and a B.F.A. in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University.  Luchetti has mounted numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally including the Peale Museum (Baltimore, MD), the Brattleboro Museum (Brattleboro, VT), Western Colorado Center for the Arts (Grand Junction, CO), Augsburg University, (Minneapolis, MN), University of Connecticut (Stamford, CT), Edinboro University (Edinboro, PA), Parkland College (Champaign, IL), Terre Roveresche (Urbino Pesaro, Italy), and CCNOA (Brussels, Belgium).

View the online exhibition: www.LolaShepard.com