Lirosi deconstructs and reconstructs particular fruits and vegetables in such a way as to encourage and challenge the viewer to reconsider their relationship with nature and the foods from which they derive nourishment.

Beginning with an individual photograph of a specific piece of fruit or vegetable, Lirosi scans and pixilates the image before recreating this image in a three-dimensional painting comprised of hand-coloured polystyrene cubes. 

This technologisation of each photographic image by pixilation is designed to alert the viewer to the increasing technological intervention in agricultural crop production and to the possible effects of genetically modified foods on human health and the environment. 

In this body of work, we see only a reminder of the particular fruit or vegetable depicted and this engenders an almost unbearable sense of longing to touch and hold the object in its original state.  By drawing attention to the potentially abstract components of all living objects, Lirosi’s work unsettles any assumptions we might hold about the fixed and permanent nature of our surroundings and the environment in which we reside.

By Lynn Savery