“Let me get comfortable for you,” sculptor Lesley Bodzy starts our call. She has just returned to her New York City apartment from Brooklyn, after a day of installing her latest solo show. Bodzy is inspiring to talk to, inquisitive, and always put together with impeccable style: super chic, icon vibes. I first met her a couple of years ago at an exhibition where her gold paint pour sculptures dialogued with the lunching nude in Edouard Manet’s famed Dejeuner sur l’Herbe(1863). It all looks and feels effortless, but she assures it is not. That is her edge, she is sincere and has a force that attracts. She’s a baddie. Living between Houston and New York City, Bodzy creates fresh work about topics that make a lot of people uncomfortable. 

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand: Levity and Depth, your most recent solo show showcases your new body of work, balloons that are injected with foam, plastics, coated in resin, and various states of in- or deflation. Subtitled Contrasts and Confluences, what dualities does this show speak to?

Lesley Bodzy: Levity refers to both humor but also lightness, while depth symbolizes the depth of the subject--

What subject? 

Aging and death. 

‍A tricky topic. 

Yes, we are all afraid of aging. Humor is the antidote to aging. But, what does it look and feel like: Is it fleeting? Is it inflated, deflated? I started thinking about aging some ten years ago. Some of my friends had started getting sick, even passing away, and my mother was becoming elderly. Today she is 96 and she has friends that are 35 and although her body is not what is used to be she is still living, her humor is intact. So, I realized that there was an antidote. 

Demi Moore’s character in the film The Substance is obsessed with youth, she abuses her own body to maintain it. I like your concept of an ‘antidote.’ Are your artworks part of the antidote? ‍

Maybe. The gallerist pointed out that some of the most beautiful works—with the brighter colors—are the ones that are the most deflated or sagging. 

The works lay bare what happens to our bodies when we age. Personally, I think youth is more of an approach, or mindset.

You get it. A previous series, my golden paint skins, were all about concealment. When making them I pour acrylic paint and let it pool on the floor to then remove it and drape it onto various shapes. It took months to figure out how to mix and manipulate the material, which was a great process. I was reflecting on how women, myself included, sometimes feel the need to remain silent or hidden. The balloons evoke more direct connotations to the body and its fluids. 

Tell me about your masturbation series that remain unshown but that you have been working on for some time, I love them.

I have been working on them for a year and a half. An art history professor told me that when Venus covers her genitals in different Renaissance paintings, it was not to hide, or to be chaste, instead she was masturbating.

Rona Goffen launched this theory about Titian’s Venus of Urbino. She studied medical manuscripts from the period, which stated that women must orgasm to conceive and she concluded that Titian’s Venus, whose fingers are curling inward, was masturbating. 

Exactly. It was a wedding portrait, a maid in the background rummaging in a trousseau and the dog, that represents fidelity, are the telltale signs—of course, fertility was key to marriage then. I was intrigued by this lesser known concept and started painting the hands of different Venuses, and other famous female nudes, on transparents and played around with materials. I work on these in Chelsea as they require less space; it might be time to return to them.

Certainly, reclaim Venus. Makes me think about Guerilla Girls 1989 poster Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum? which states: “Less than 5% of the artists in the modern art section are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” For your solo show Levity and Depth, balloons are hung on various levels and in your Chelsea studio, which kind of doubles as a show room, the pieces are harmoniously installed, everywhere—hanging from the ceiling, on the walls, on pedestals, in the windowsill, and the floor. Do you consider their positions in space when you sculpt your work, and how do you plan your installs? 

Women have more freedom today. In terms of curation, that’s all thanks to others. After a piece is done, it becomes part of a collaborative process where a curator, gallerist, or collector envisions its placement. My dealer in Houston for instance suggested I group 3D printed works I was making in constellations of nine—and they sold as a set. Likewise, a curator set up my New York studio-slash-showroom—I had never thought of putting works on the floor, but it worked so well. In Houston, I work on larger scale pieces so the space is less set up for visitors, but I have had help to install pieces in the hallway and some on the walls. 

Does your artistic practice embolden you? 

Oh, that’s such a good turn of phrase.

I see you as bold, as a person, both in your style and your approach to life. 

Thank you. Well, I don’t feel good if I’m not making anything. Some people go to the gym, I make art. It is just necessary for my wellbeing to make art. Fashion also makes me feel good. Putting something beautiful on or creating a look to reflect a mood or time energizes me. I love that my shot reflects the return of the suit, an Annie Hall look, everything comes back—experimentation is such a big part of art and fashion, and both offer an opportunity to take a playful approach to time.  

Where would you like to see your work? 

At Pinault’s Bourse de Commerce in Paris. You’ve been there, right? Do you remember the glass case medicine cabinets that line the atrium, I think my work would look good there. Or, anywhere really, even the restaurant, which is really sleek and sexy. 

I can definitely see that. 

Thanks, and since the synergies between art and fashion are so hot right now, I would like to design a bag for Dior.  

Levity and Depth: Contrasts and Confluences in New Sculptures by Lesley Bodzy is open at M. David & Co. in Sunset Park, 214 40th Street, Brooklyn through March 31st, 2025. 

Photographed by Milan Lazovski

Styled by Chardonnay Taylor

Written by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

Creative Direction: Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, Milan Lazovski and Chardonnay Taylor

Make-up: Kitty Quinn

Hair: Yetunde Egunjobi

Stylist Assistant: Sal Sallie

Producer: Anna Mikaela Ekstrand