Ralph Lazar

Statement

Statement

Lisa and the girls atop Mpandangare the Brave, finally arriving in my spiritual home, Botswana's Central Kalahari, after four months of traveling through Southern Africa. This is one of the last places on earth where lions at times still outnumber humans.
Lisa and the girls atop Mpandangare the Brave, finally arriving in my spiritual home, Botswana's Central Kalahari, after four months of traveling through Southern Africa. This is one of the last places on earth where lions at times still outnumber humans.

My aim as an artist is to capture our times and my response to them. To this end, I work in two distinct series.

Flow Pieces (an ongoing journal)

I contemporaneously document my daily life, a visual journal capturing the news, music, data, and conversations that surround me. These pieces fuse news headlines with song lyrics, random miscellany, maps, lists, and the weather. I recorded the first Trump presidency in detail, and I track financial markets, current affairs, lions through our campsites, and wave conditions on the closest beach to me.

Fundamental Pieces (snapshots)

These are descriptive, documentary-style snapshots and summaries: the full history of the US Supreme Court, close-ups of US Constitutional amendments, info-graphics of the US House and Senate, historical summaries, explanations of economic theories, navigation charts, natural history, etymology, tide tables, wildebeest migrations, Atlantic pressure systems, and my Xhosa lessons.