Laura Owens
dal 10/6/2006 al 12/8/2006
Segnalato da
10/6/2006
Laura Owens
Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich
An exhibition of the artist's paintings in a large-scale survey of Owens' works from 1994 to 2006. The artist has agreed to allow the public a glimpse into her studies on canvas that are crucial to her work.
Solo show
Among the artists who have chosen the medium of painting as their means of
expression, Laura Owens who was born in 1970 and lives in Los Angeles is
internationally one of the most extraordinary. Since the mid-1990s she has
appeared on the scene with an oeuvre that succeeds, in both a seductive as
well as disconcerting way, in making painting an cognitive adventure for the
viewer, by fusing the traditions of art history with those of applied art,
themes of abstraction with representation, and artistic-conceptual
stringency with lightness and visual fascination.
For the first time at an European venue, the Kunsthalle Zurich will present
an exhibition of the artist's paintings in a large-scale survey of her works
from 1994 to 2006. And for the first time ever, the artist has agreed to
allow the public a glimpse into her studies on canvas that are crucial to
her work and that she prepares for each of her paintings in varying formats
and, in part, numerous versions. These works (approx. 75), together with the
oeuvre catalogue on the works on canvas that will evolve during the
exhibition, will complete this first comprehensive access to Laura Owens¹
work. The exhibition will then tour for its second venue in September 2006
to the Camden Arts Centre in London.
A tropical monkey reaches for a western butterfly; bears, rabbits and
different species of fauna romp on an island-like piece of land, encircled
by a blue that is not the sea but a daylight sky with cottony clouds through
which a moon-hung, traditional night sky is wedged, against whose darkness
an owl sits on a branch. Landscapes, animals, times of the day and
geographical realities appear simultaneously and with equal value, as do the
various painterly representations and techniques, which the artist has
chosen to produce her picture: aquarelle techniques with impasto painting,
loving sense for detail with gestural suggestion, illusion of perspective
with flat-plane abstraction, confrontational collaging with a marquetry-like
interweave of different themes, realities and technical procedures.
In this encounter with Laura Owens¹ paintings we meet up with every
conceivable, friendly, i.e., all too familiar, picture world as a surface:
whether it be the heroic formats of abstract tradition, the so-called pure
experience of colour-fields and the basic forms of non-representational
painting, whether it be fairytale scenes populated with fabled creatures of
every imaginable cultural origin, or the decorative, adventurous flower
compositions and still lifes tinged with sweetness, whether architecture,
landscape and love scenes. The artist deploys all the means of picture
making in the same encyclopedic way, from global high art to folk art, from
the various professional fields of painting, of handicraft and the
techniques of the amateur and dilettante: accomplished painting exists next
to gingerbread adornment when she draws colour directly onto the canvas as
though it were cake; technically perfect illusionist painting next to
seemingly naive depictions. Painting methods from different image-making
processes seem inappropriately combined in one picture, and the friendliness
of the motifs is always confronted with the undaunted, side-by-side
alignment of her procedure along with the crass disharmony of the colour
compositions.
The references Laura Owens uses for her pictures are never concealed or
deployed with postmodern polemics. One could easily come up with a list of
references that goes from the Renaissance, by way of Impressionism, Abstract
Expressionism, Chinese and Japanese painting and their printing techniques,
via the mostly anonymous masters of folk art and the arts and crafts,
chiefly of female provenance, such as weaving, embroidering and ceramics, up
to the current art history.
The all-embracing simultaneity and co-existing emplacement of all styles,
techniques and motifs in Laura Owens¹ pictures generate a matter-of-fact,
laid-back collective creativity, which she as an individual can use and that
for her paintings signifies a liberation from representation, from the
gesture of historical reference and from irony, all of which can be applied
as a burden to the history of picture making.
Catalogue: A richly illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition presenting the
entire painterly oeuvre of Laura Owens from 1994 to 2006. Texts by Gloria
Sutton, Rod Wengham, Beatrix Ruf and Laura Owens in conversation with artist
colleagues, c. 195 pages. Publishing date: September 2006.
Opening: 11 June, from 5-9 pm
Kunsthalle Zurich
Limmatstrasse 270 - Zurich