Lisa Lapinski is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture in the Visual and Dramatic Arts Department in the School of Humanities as well as an artist who creates dense, formally complex sculptures which utilize both the language of traditional craft and advanced semiotics. Her uncanny objects interrogate the production of desire and the exchange of meaning in an image-based society. Discussing a group show in 2007, New York Times Art Writer Holland Cotter noted, "An installation by Lisa Lapinski carries a hefty theory- studies title: 'Christmas Tea-Meeting, Presented by Dialogue and Humanism, Formerly Dialectics and Humanism.' But the piece itself just looks breezily enigmatic." It is often remarked that viewers of Lapinski's sculptures are enticed into an elaborate set of ritualistic decodings. In a review of her work published in ArtForum, Michael Ned Holte noted, "At such moments, it becomes clear that Lapinski's entire systemic logic is less circular than accumulative: What at first seems hermetically sealed is often surprisingly generous upon sustained investigation."
 
Lapinski's work has been exhibited widely in the US and Europe in venues including Richard Telles Fine Art (Los Angeles, CA),  Johann König (Berlin, Germany), UCLA Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA), Studio Guenzani (Milan, Italy), Kölnischer Kunstverein (Cologne, Germany) and Taka Ishii (Kyoto, Japan). In 2004, she was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. In 2008, she presented the solo exhibition The Fret and its Variants at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Her most recent projects include a solo exhibition at Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles, and a group exhibition at The Moody Center for the Arts, Houston. She is represented by Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles.