Lefty Out There
Biography
“If anything, street art is like a pop-up ad and that’s what I love about it.”
Lefty Out There (born Francesco Campanella) creates intuitive, repeated shapes and achieves the rare feat of working in contradictions. His work is both bold and intricate, organic yet uniform.
Born in Chicago in 1991, Lefty Out There was interested in art from his teenage years and sees things in more detail than most. Visiting museums, posting stickers across his hometown, consistently drawing, and sketching in the classroom, he soon became involved in the city’s burgeoning street art scene. This began the evolution of his now iconic patterns using the urban landscape as his canvas. The interlocking polymorphs, now Lefty’s signature, appear as hypnotic and almost spiritual as they reproduce and multiply endlessly across every surface.
Having studied music his entire life, Lefty has applied his education to visual art and is drawn to the rhythm of his patterns. As if listening to a metronome, he counts 1 – 2 3 – 4 in a rhythmic cadence to encourage a steady and mechanical brush stroke.
Lefty’s pattern taps into the synergy between repetition and the divine, depicting the world as a constantly evolving network of interconnections. By incorporating new technologies into his creative process, such as computer programming and precision-engineered machining, his artworks have grown into large-scale installations for notable locations like the META Headquarters, Chotto Matte and Nobu. Lefty expresses his mantra “cover everything” by engulfing spaces with his polymorphic pattern, with the purpose of bringing attention to the world around us.
In addition to creating work for galleries, Lefty has collaborated with global brands, including Google and Chicago Bulls. Most recently, he transformed a classic Porsche to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the 911. Other passion projects include supporting Project Zero Conservation and other ocean-based charities while preparing for a sustainably created reef-themed installation at Burning Man 2024.
In 2019, Lefty made his European debut with Maddox Gallery with a solo exhibition titled ‘VIVUS’. Following its success and increased artist popularity, Lefty returned to Maddox in 2022 with ‘VIVUS II’, a new body of work that explored a visual abstract representation of the world we live in today. Lefty currently resides in LA and will exhibit a multidimensional body of work, exploring the intersection of dimension, shape and colour, exclusively with Maddox Gallery at our Berkeley Street Gallery in March 2024.
