With a preface by Beatrix Ruf. Robots in the garden, lions, hunters, romance and war are some of the images in Laura Owens' new 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.
This catalogue accompanied the exhibition Laura Owens at the Kunsthalle Zurich, June – August 2006.
Essays by Beatrix Ruf, Rod Mengham, and Gloria Sutton. Conversations with Alex Katz, Elizabeth Peyton, Christian Scheidemann, Mary Heilmann, Tomma Abts, and Scott Rothkopf.
