Color and Constructivism: Kristi Lippire’s “Stepanova Project: Color as Form” hits the Guggenheim Gallery

Photo by Anika Yip, Reporter

From Aug. 25 to Oct. 3, Kristi Lippire’s exhibit “Stepanova Project – Color as Form” has been on display at Chapman’s Guggenheim Gallery. Filling the room with bright colors and patterns, the exhibit combines a variety of forms and mediums, ranging from wallpapers to weavings, garments to gouache. 

Lippire is an artist who teaches color theory and sculpture at California Baptist University in Riverside. She began developing the project in 2019, based on a month-long artist residency she did in Moscow, Russia. The exhibit was first shown in Moscow from March to April of 2024. 

“Stepanova Project – Color as Form” draws inspiration from Soviet Constructivism, an early 20th-century artistic movement that aimed to create art that would be a part of everyday life. According to Lippire, the movement emphasized the construction of an object rather than superficial aspects such as the facade and appearance.  

"It's almost like poetry for an object, where it's slimmed down to just the necessities,” Lippire said. 

Soviet Constructivism has ties to Leninism and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. According to Lippire, the Constructivists supported Stalin and his desire to change from a Czar-ruled society to communism.

“The Russian Constructivists are revolutionaries, so there were a lot of activists that showed up to my show, which was cool,” Lippire said.

Lippire’s exhibit came to the Guggenheim Gallery by a series of unexpected circumstances. Guggenheim Gallery director Marcus Herse already knew Lippire and had exhibited her work before. Both ended up experiencing cancellations of the shows they’d had planned at the same time. 

“She had planned to show this exhibition at another institution, which fell through, and while in the meantime, the show that I had slated for this first fall slot in the Guggenheim Gallery became too expensive for me to finance,” Herse said. 

Both Herse and Lippire had an open slot, giving them the perfect chance to bring Lippire’s exhibit to Chapman. 

Herse also notes the relevance of Lippire’s exhibit to Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences’ Engaging the World theme for fall 2025. Titled “Leading the Conversation on the Environment and Building Resilient Futures,” the series discusses social, political and natural environments. 

Each fall, Herse tries to come up with an exhibition that relates to the theme, as the Guggenheim Gallery is part of Wilkinson. According to Herse, Lippire’s work relates because it offers a deep dive into Russian architecture and the built environment, both in Russia and in Southern California.

Lippire draws inspiration from Varvara Stepanova, a Russian Constructivist of the 1920s and 1930s, who worked in various mediums including costume design, set design, textile design, graphic design and photo books. 

Tamara Garcia is a junior film and media studies major and student gallery assistant at Guggenheim Gallery. She enjoys writing about art and media and analyzing the representation of gender and sexuality within it, primarily from a feminine perspective. 

“ I took some inspiration from the fact that Kristi Lippire blends her work with Varvara Stepanova’s to further create a conversation on the female and feminine perspective when it comes to Soviet Constructivism and Modernism,” Garcia said. 

Stepanova’s influence can be found throughout the exhibit’s work. Lippire created a collection of collages featuring photo cutouts of her own head pasted onto colorfully-patterned, whimsical outfit designs on a blocky body, inspired by similar collages by Stepanova. 

Lippire also produced wearable outfits inspired by Stepanova’s designs for women’s clothing. Featuring items such as coveralls and various styles of athletic wear, the designs reflect a sense of practicality; Lippire notes the importance of being able to move freely in these outfits. 

“She was one of these new women, or one of the new artists in Constructivism, that fulfilled the mission statement of Constructivism, which was to put art out into life,” Lippire said of Stepanova. 

Lippire added her own colorful, geometric patterns and designs to the garments, using fabric printed with the designs of her own gouache paintings. Lippire’s mother sewed the outfits. 

Lippire combined the inspiration taken from her Russian residency with materials and skills gained from another residency she did in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she learned natural dyeing and weaving using yarn. Lippire used her naturally-dyed yarn from Oaxaca to produce colorful weavings based on Stepanova’s work. 

Much of the exhibit’s work is inspired by Lippire’s observations of urban design and architecture. Lippire created many gouache paintings based on urban and architectural elements she encountered during her residency, such as window designs, the floor tiles of the factory she stayed in and the ornately-designed manhole covers in Moscow’s Red Square. 

Lippire’s appreciation for urban design and architecture in Moscow also inspired her to look at her environment back home differently, such as the manhole covers in her own neighborhood. 

“I started to photograph my own surroundings, and looking at and appreciating them kind of in a new way, which I really enjoyed,” Lippire said. 

These more local architectural features also found a place in Lippire’s art. Another element found in Lippire’s work are breeze blocks, a type of patterned cinderblock commonly found in Southern California. 

“Again, going to another place, you get to see things you've never seen before, and then come home and say, ‘What do we have? What do we do? What is cool here?’ And for me, it was breeze blocks,” Lippire said. 

Lippire also produced a series of colorful collages depicting buildings she saw during a Constructivist architecture tour in Moscow, which mostly featured structures by architect Konstanin Melnikov. According to Lippire, many of the buildings depicted were once-functioning buildings that are now dilapidated. 

“But they are for the people, for the masses. They were worker social centers, like where you would hang out after work and get a drink or see a movie, or just hang out and talk,” Lippire said. 

As an artist, Lippire is interested in art as it functions outside of being just a purchased object — in Lippire’s ideal, it’s something more social. 

“The political stance is about disrupting the hierarchy of who can afford to live with art and who doesn't afford to live with art,” Lippire said. “And how can we adjust that so anyone who wants to can?”