Lizzy Lunday (b. 1992) probes the constant stream of digital images—on reality TV, in advertising, on social media—to identify the modern-day mythologies that shape our conceptions of self. Following in the line of history painters who used biblical imagery, historical trope, and Greek and Roman iconography to tell the stories of their time, Lunday works within the vernacular of contemporary-consumerist imagery to reflect the multi-layered realities we inhabit. Serialized notions of femininity and masculinity, vulnerability and intimacy are performed by figures that seem to exist somewhere between the screen and the flesh. Beneath the sheen of celebrity culture, moments of authenticity reveal themselves—a woman recoiling from an artificial act of affection, or an observer whispering something taboo into their neighbor’s ear. It’s in this melding of superficiality and candor that the viewer locates the unsteady, omniscient influence of our present-day avatars: What was once painted a snake in the Garden of Eden or a siren on a shore is now something on a feed, or a stream, that’s just as infectious and alluring.

Bright palettes and a dynamic visual language welcome viewers into spectacles where individual and environment are in constant, cyclical dialogue. Initially seduced into a world that appears wonderful and thrilling, viewers then encounter a disorienting mix of abstraction and hard edges that asks us to consider questions of reality versus performativity. As Lunday’s characters begin to blend into their surroundings, and as the extremity of their emotions comes to the fore, a sense of uncertainty, instability and anxiety is introduced. What was an exciting illusion quickly becomes precarious; we start to wonder whether this narrative is unrealistic or unreliable. Offering a commentary on both the superficiality but also the romance of media-consumerism, the viewer is invited to consider the intimacy of the contemporary relationship between celebrity and consumer, society and self, reality and artifice.

Lunday received her BFA at the University of Miami in Miami, FL in 2019, and later received her MFA at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 2019. She has been the subject of solo shows, including recent exhibitions at GNYP Gallery, Antwerp, BE (2024); Fredericks & Freiser, New York, NY (2023 & 2021); Jupiter Contemporary, Miami, FL (2023); and GNYP Gallery, Berlin, DE (2022). Lunday lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

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