Angelica Lorenzi (b. 1990) is an Italian designer, mixed media artist and educator currently living in Los Angeles. Angelica holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Innsbruck and a Master of Architecture degree with honors from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Her love for unconventional material applications, and traditional crafts brought her to relate art to the design of interiors, objects, and architecture.
Angelica works across multiple media, with a primary focus on ceramics. Her practice is rooted in an ongoing pursuit of elaborate textures, intricate tapestries of shapes and colors, and glazes that evoke an ethereal opulence. This decorative abundance serves not only as an aesthetic choice but as a critical reflection on the human-ecosystem relationship, highlighting its synthetic underpinnings and the emergence of new mythologies. Lorenzi’s ceramics embody an exploration of ornament as a vehicle for expressing ideas of identity, immanence, and vulnerability, embracing how materiality can accumulate and transform to tell layered stories.
Her work challenges classical notions of humanism, shifting the natural world from a passive backdrop to an essential protagonist within the narrative of existence. The ceramic pieces often overflow with organic patterns that evoke geological formations, deep-sea environments, or blooming meadows, blurring the boundary between natural and fantastical. Embedded within these landscapes are fictional creatures—playful, vibrant, and symbolically charged—that invite curiosity and introspection. These whimsical critters foster a renewed sense of wonder, encouraging viewers to reconsider their connection to the environment through a more imaginative lens.
Lorenzi’s practice operates within a tension between attraction and repulsion, confronting viewers with the seductive, yet unsettling, excess of adornment as a form of psychological armor. Her ceramics are not merely decorative objects but become performative entities, engaging in a dialogue about interspecies relationships—both real and imagined. Through their intricate surfaces and complex compositions, these works suggest that decoration can be as much about concealment as it is about revelation, raising questions about what it means to protect, reveal, or obscure in both personal and ecological contexts.
Lorenzi’s approach seeks to expand the discourse surrounding materiality, aesthetics, and the dichotomy between craft and fine arts. By embracing decoration not as a superficial addition but as a conceptual tool, her work repositions ornamentation as a driver of meaning. Through this lens, her ceramics provoke reflection on how we define value, form relationships, and perceive the natural world. In doing so, her work invites us to reimagine the possibilities of narrative through material transformation and accumulation, where beauty, fragility, and ecology intertwine in unexpected ways.
Her work challenges classical notions of humanism, shifting the natural world from a passive backdrop to an essential protagonist within the narrative of existence. The ceramic pieces often overflow with organic patterns that evoke geological formations, deep-sea environments, or blooming meadows, blurring the boundary between natural and fantastical. Embedded within these landscapes are fictional creatures—playful, vibrant, and symbolically charged—that invite curiosity and introspection. These whimsical critters foster a renewed sense of wonder, encouraging viewers to reconsider their connection to the environment through a more imaginative lens.
Lorenzi’s practice operates within a tension between attraction and repulsion, confronting viewers with the seductive, yet unsettling, excess of adornment as a form of psychological armor. Her ceramics are not merely decorative objects but become performative entities, engaging in a dialogue about interspecies relationships—both real and imagined. Through their intricate surfaces and complex compositions, these works suggest that decoration can be as much about concealment as it is about revelation, raising questions about what it means to protect, reveal, or obscure in both personal and ecological contexts.
Lorenzi’s approach seeks to expand the discourse surrounding materiality, aesthetics, and the dichotomy between craft and fine arts. By embracing decoration not as a superficial addition but as a conceptual tool, her work repositions ornamentation as a driver of meaning. Through this lens, her ceramics provoke reflection on how we define value, form relationships, and perceive the natural world. In doing so, her work invites us to reimagine the possibilities of narrative through material transformation and accumulation, where beauty, fragility, and ecology intertwine in unexpected ways.
Angelica's work has been shown in various international exhibitions and galleries, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Cleo the Gallery, Modest Common, Galerie Lulla and Vienna Biennale.