Conduit Gallery is honored to present Selected works on paper: 2003 - 2020, a survey of drawings by Dallas-based artist, Stephen Lapthisophon.

Spanning works on paper created between 2003 and 2020, the exhibition brings together a concentrated survey of Stephen Lapthisophon’s sustained and rigorous studio practice.

The works reveal the continuity of Lapthisophon’s visual language across nearly two decades. His mixed-media compositions operate as poetic improvisations, drawing from deeply embedded literary references, music, poetry and the legacy of twentieth-century art. Rather than quoting directly, the works absorb and reconfigure these influences, allowing fragments of cultural memory to surface and dissolve within layered fields of mark and material.

Materiality is central to Lapthisophon’s practice. Through the use of unconventional mediums—pigmented animal fats, spices, dirt, coffee grounds—Lapthisophon elevates the “stuff of everyday life”, echoing theItalian Arte Povera artists of the 1960s and 70s. These materials carry their own histories, scents. and temporal associations, transforming the surface into a site of accumulation. In doing so, Lapthisophon resists immediacy. His works ask the viewer to slow down, to look longer, and to engage with meanings that are neither fixed nor easily accessible.