Dorit Cypis
“To See,” 2013
30″ x 22,” Hanemuhle Rag paper
Stone Press Lithograph
*Edition of 3, + 1 AP
Courtesy of the artist and LM Projects

This work is dedicated to the late Michael Asher who serves as a catalyst for Dorit Cypis’ ongoing research project The Sighted See the Surface. Asher’s critique of institutions shaping what is made visible and not visible to the public has inspired Cypis to work with the Braille Institute in Los Angeles as a site for study and collaboration. Since June 2013, Cypis has been volunteering at the Braille Institute’s Telephone Reader Project, reading weekly the daily newspaper for sight challenged people.

Cypis’ work with the non-sighted has deepened her investigation into esthetics, ethics and engagement – the root of her art practice since the late 1970’s. The Sighted See the Surface presents an in depth inquiry into comprehending the complexities between sight and seeing, otherness and difference and the relationships between the interior and exterior self.

Since the inception of this project in 2012, Cypis has produced sets of text-based work, photographs, drawings and writings. LM Projects is pleased to be part of this project by collaborating with Cypis to produce a set of three text prints as stone press lithographs.

Dorit Cypis is a visual artist as well as an innovative professional mediator. She has moved fluidly between studio practice, educator, mediator and community builder since the 1980’s. Her strategies of performance, photography, text, immersive installation and social sculpture explore relationships between psychological and social/political aspects of history, knowledge and experience. Her practice as a conflict mediator extends her exploration of human relations into the public domain. Cypis has taught on identity and social relations across the USA, Canada, Holland, France, Switzerland, Germany and Israel.

Cypis has exhibited internationally including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, International Center of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Musee d’Art Contemporain/Montreal, Musee des Beaux Arts/Bruxelles, Walker Art Center, and locally at the Hammer Museum, Orange County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Bank Art, Las Cienegas Projects, Tom Jancar, RedCat, Greene Exhibitions, Hinge Modern and LM Projects.

Cypis reshaped Foundation for Art Resources, 1979-1982, Los Angeles, to model partnership between artists and public sites, inspiring interaction and discourse; founded Kulture Klub Collaborative, 1992-active/Minneapolis, bridging survival and inspiration by partnering artists and homeless youth to build their self knowledge and expression; founded Foreign Exchanges 2007, bridging aesthetics and mediation to innovate engagement and conflict transformation capacity across personal and cultural differences. Cypis is a founding member of Mediators Beyond Borders International.

In 2014 she was honoured with a Guggenheim Fellowship and SPArt Award. Other awards include Japan Foundation, Bush, McKnight, Jerome, Ordway and Durfee Foundations, City of Los Angeles Cultural Arts, Fellows of Contemporary Art, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art and Bachelor of Education from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Masters of Fine Art from Californian Institute of the Arts, and Masters of Conflict Resolution, MDR, from Pepperdine University.

Dorit Cypis was born in Israel, immigrated to Canada as a child and to the USA as a young adult. She currently lives in Los Angeles.