Lewis Baltz Research Fund

The LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND has been established to honor the vision and memory of the American artist Lewis Baltz. The fund involves the annual grant of a substantial fund to support the creation, completion and dissemination of a project in any artistic medium, encompassing, but not limited to, anything from academic research to book publication, performance or installation art, video or film production to experimental digital work. The intention is to support projects reflecting the intellectual rigor of Lewis Baltz’s conceptual practice which also succeeded in propounding a significant connection to social and political issues. The recipient will be selected by the LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND Committee, composed of Mark McCain, art fiend, Theresa Luisotti and Thomas Zander, gallerists, Slavica Perkovic, artist, Michael Mack, publisher and Diane Dufour, director of LE BAL. Operated by LE BAL, The LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND has been created by the generous support of the Artworkers Retirement Society.

INAUGURAL RECIPENTS LBRF 2015 
ALESSANDRO LAITA & CHIARALICE RIZZI

The first LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND has been awarded to two young Italian artists, Alessandro Laita and Chiaralice Rizzi for their book project Live in the house and it will not fall down. The book is built out of an archive of images collected over four decades by the Venetian artist Bruno Rizzi, who died in 2004. In 2010, Alessandro Laita and Chiaralice Rizzi found the collection and began to work on a project to explore its poetic potential. Live in the house and it will not fall down is a gallery of fragments, a collection of memories, the story of one and more people, of a house, of a city. 

« The two artists ‘intervene in the delicate geology that underlies such piles of papers sedimented over the years, undo the precise historical map created by the thin veils of dust covering the objects and interrupt the flow of that low-intensity energy which is generated by localized memory. » (Antonello Frongia)

Chiaralice Rizzi (1982) and Alessandro Laita (1979) studied Visual Arts at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice. Between 2010 and 2015, they worked as teaching assistants to Lewis Baltz and Adrian Paci. Their artistic practice develops around the thematic of landscape, memory and representation. Lewis Baltz participated in editing their project Live in the house and it will not fall down.