Lucien Shapiro’s performance entitled, “Bitter Sweet” will take place at Cakeland’s Beauty War. Supplementary to the themes of Cakeland, Shapiro will offer his own unique and mesmerizing spin on Light and Darkness. He will help you see how you react and harness each of these energies, both individually and together. There is only Light because of Darkness, and vice versa.
After traversing through Cakeland, you will descend into Shapiro’s world of meticulous art and exploration. Through Shapiro’s gentle guidance and artistic practice, you will be able to see the true strength you hold within your self while also releasing the things that no longer serve you. It’s a guided and safe adventure unto yourself. Participants are not asked to speak, and you can experience the performance however you wish. You hold the power.
Now more than ever we need to venture inward and feel comfortable with who we are, our beliefs, and what we have gone through, in order to arrive at the present moment fresh and ready for whatever comes next.
About Lucien Shapiro: Lucien Shapiro was born in 1979 in Santa Rosa, CA. He attended San Francisco Academy of Art University and received a BFA in 2003. Since then, he’s developed multiple practices, held residencies all over the country, and presented his work at solo exhibitions. The underlying and concurrent theme of Shapiro’s work revolves around painstaking repetition, meticulous attention to craft, and the transformation of everyday objects. He composes elaborately constructed masks and ornately armored weaponry and vessels, which examine a relationship between modern waste and memories of ancient cultural artifacts. Practices and customs from the past are brought back to light through his revival of discarded materials, transformed into objects analogous with self-protection. A laborious craft and meditative consumption of time transforms forgotten objects into nostalgically interesting and beautiful relics that compel viewers to reevaluate what our everyday possessions represent and mean to us. In an age of consumption, waste, addiction, and destruction, Shapiro’s work is vitally needed and relevant. Employing the theories of natural growth such as branches, root systems, and crystals, his work continues circling around to similar conclusions: that the end result is the same no matter what the work is; it always leads to personal growth and self-realization.
