les presses du réel
Laura Owens -
Paintings / collages: ornementation and pictural elegance.
Born 1970, Laura Owens lives and works in L.A. Robots in the garden, lions, hunters, romance and war are some of the images in her work. Owens' influences are wide, ranging from Dada performance to hindu relief ; elsewhere she has broken away from the fine arts to delve into wallpapers and textiles.
Beyond the straightforward beauty of Owens' paintings and drawings is a constant questioning of her chosen media. She has rejected naturalism in favour of depictions, representations. Her magpie-like approach to resources is echoed in her application of paint and the arrival of foreign elements in her collages. Evident too is an unashamed pleasure in ornamentation, a delight in pictorial elegance, which affords decoration a new dignity. Owens combines abstract elements with representational elements to create a highly personal vocabulary: a vocabulary which translates into an elaborate, elegant and quietly exuberant whole.
Edited by Beatrix Ruf.
Texts by Rod Mengham and Gloria Sutton.
Interviews with the artist.

Published in collaboration with the Kunsthalle Zurich.
 
published in 2006
bilingual edition (English / German)
25 x 32 cm (hardcover)
192 pages (80 colour & 40 b/w ill.)
 
ISBN : 978-3-905770-11-7
EAN : 9783905770117
 
sold out


 top of page