LAURA OWENS

Born 1970 in Euclid, OH

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Laura Owens’ large-scale paintings burst with fantastically inventive associations and allusions as they move between abstraction, figuration and decoration. She playfully but knowingly combines a variety of art historical techniques and conventions to create a dense network of references that range from the avant-garde to pop culture. Owens’ approach to painting is experimental as she combines and alternates painterly techniques with digital composition and analogue personal touches such as drawings, cartoons and sketches. The techniques seamlessly blend into cohesive compositions that are sensitive and refreshing.

Commanding not only space but also attention, the paintings are densely layered and intricate, full of wit and irreverence, packed with thoughtful details and illusions. There is much to discover in each brilliant, colorful work, and her entire practice appears as an endlessly evolving process, in which she continually strives to push the boundaries of painting and pictorial representation.

Owens held major exhibitions at Galerie Gisela Capitain (2022), at the Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles as well as at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2021. Other solo shows include House of Gaga, Mexico City (2020); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018-2019); Dallas Museum of Art (2018); The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2016); Secession, Vienna (2015); 356 S. Mission Rd., Los Angeles (2013); Art Unlimited, Basel (2012). Owens’ work can be found in many public art collections including among others the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art all in New York.

Alongside painting, Owens has created many artists books and also co-founded and ran the exhibition space 356 S. Mission Road, in Los Angeles from 2013 to 2019.