Objects tell many stories; arguably more than any owner can recount at a given time. Along what channels do our prized, necessary possessions travel, on their journey from conception to the buyer’s market, to the individual home?
Visual metaphor explores this query in Losskarn’s work; hyper-realistic pastel artworks drawn from meticulously self-captured reference images depict strange, oftentimes absurd, and decidedly incorrect pop-culture product interactions as an intricately staged and up-close still life that gives special consideration to the recognizable impacts of the commonplace use of gender-ized advertisement imagery and rhetoric in contemporary product marketing. Assessing the heavy, historical reliance on gendered marketing schemes to sell products and experiences, Losskarn’s work exists as a feminist criticism on the ways in which Western capitalist practices have shaped and governed the formation, expression, and interpretation of individual identities.
Taking these symbols further, visual metaphor is constructed through the repetition of nonsense imagery and themes which relate to sex, gender, and the histosocial intertwining of these topics in the context of capitalist consumer culture; a plastic knife is inserted through a stick of butter, meat is cut/removed and swapped with almost surgical precision, a safety-pin penetrates a gummy bear, a price-label-sticker covers yet another safety-pin. In this way, Losskarn’s repetition of gender-related imagery and themes works to create an intentional sense of confusion which mirrors her feelings on broader political discourses on gender and sex. In viewing her absurd still-life drawings, she would like viewers to ponder why it is that she has presented such an uncannily oriented collection of familiar, household-object-based imagery, allowing observers the opportunity to come to their own conclusions on the meaning of her artwork before understanding her work as a whole. When viewed as a collection, Losskarn’s drawings more potently reveal her contemporary criticisms on the themes of gender and sex — the repetition of absurd pop-culture imagery across her work as a whole allows for a slow-burning realization that fosters an inclusive and interpretive approach to creating a public dialogue on gender which cannot be easily ignored.
Isabella Losskarn is a pastel artist, researcher, and writer whose work uses visual metaphor to assess a variety of contemporary queries on intersections between gender, sexuality, and the human act of living in a marketized atmosphere. Her hyper-realistic pastel artworks of strange, oftentimes absurd, and decidedly incorrect pop-culture product interactions have been exhibited in a number of venues across the Southeastern United States, including Goodyear Arts (Charlotte, NC), the Spartanburg Art Museum, the LaGrange Art Museum, and Revolve Gallery in Asheville, NC. Losskarn received her BFA in Drawing from UNC Asheville in 2021, and is currently based in Athens, GA as an MFA candidate at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia with an expected commencement date of May 2026.
Born in 1999, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Losskarn grew up in a way that was synchronous with technological and societal change. Coming of age in the early 2000’s, she has experienced firsthand how the portrayal of gender stereotypes in mass media and popular culture can influence one’s own perception of gender. Confused by a lack of honest dialogue and unequal representations of gender in the media, at home, and at school, she became motivated to use art as a way to communicate an understanding of the impacts of gendered experiences to broad audiences.
Working exclusively from artist-captured reference photographs, she collects and spends time with each of the objects seen in her drawings before they are placed in a composition and photographed. Rooted heavily in the regular study of gender-based research, the artist’s studio practice pulls from personal and anonymous gendered experiences in an effort to address a specific absurdity— the circumstances and consequences of the overwhelming presence of gendered stereotypes, ideas and imagery in our daily life.