Experimental Methods
Laura Owens at the Whitney Museum
Many artists have gained their reputation through developing a recognizable set of stylistic or conceptual cues. Laura Owens happens to have taken the opposite approach.
Since the 1990s, when painting was then considered a dead end, Owens took up the medium and began experimenting in every direction imaginable. Since her early years, her work has only grown in humor, variety, and intelligence, and it is now on display in a resplendent survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Organized by the Whitney’s brilliant curator Scott Rothkopf, this show presents dozens of works by Owens that are breathtaking in their experimentation.
Much like her early contemporaries John Currin or Elizabeth Peyton, Owens bucked trends by simply engaging with painting. Rather than working conceptually, Owens seemed to have been more interested in trying something new and seeing if it would stick. Such diversity in these first few galleries shows an artist totally in control of art history, with her witty use of painterly and craft-making techniques. Some of these paintings show art in galleries and studios at angles which indicate architecture, albeit stylized and flattened. These minute paintings of paintings all seem to quote various factions of abstraction. Planar forms also indicate a reference to Chinese and Japanese screens and printmaking. These works all seem quiet and elegant, but also there is the lingering feeling you are witness to an inside joke.
In a collaborative work from 1999 with her former boyfriend Jorge Pardo, Owens shows paintings of bees buzzing above Pardo’s displays of bedroom sets. Banal and innocent, like a suburban furniture store, this installation shows painting as a trope: décor for a home. However, upon closer inspection, the whole thing only uses markers of intimacy and sex. Soft colors, manic bees, and double beds in various iterations suddenly take a cynical joke and turn it upside down. Everything is suddenly radiating sensuality, passion, and creation.
While the 1990s seem to focus on twisting the various generalities and histories of painting and abstraction, the 2000s see Owens reaching into her own world and the world around her. Pastoral scenes of flowers and animals have the purity and total lack of irony that one expected from the artist in the 1990s. Paintings of children and couples kissing seem to reflect the prosperous personal life of the artist as well. They are all a dose of visual tranquility and warmth. One could view this as a rebuttal to the gender politics that were being canonized at this time. Owens shows that beauty and power does exist in partnership, in children, and love. These motifs and relationships all share the common link of creation.
However, this period is clearly marked with a certain level of darkness. There are passages within the exhibition that show storybook depictions of armed men fighting or dark stormy seas. To contextualize, Owens often felt the politics of the United States after 9/11 and the subsequent wars in the Middle East were deeply troubling. These rooms are filled with odd tension. The artist is creating an escape with her art, but also inverting this imagery to address political turmoil and violence.
In final galleries of the exhibition, Owens has put her latest efforts on display. Returning to abstraction, the artist shows what painting can do right now. Using computer graphics, printmaking, cartoon and newspaper appropriations, impasto-like chunks of paint, and every other gesture and technique under the sun, Owens shows massive, colorful canvases that are simultaneously rapturous and amusing. Painting becomes sculptural and physical with their heavy and bold presence.
I think many viewers will leave this show feeling surprised that this is a mid-career survey for dual reasons. The prolific and masterful output of the artist would indicate a full-on retrospective, but the extremely forward-looking approach to painting feels as contemporary and youthful as a young artist’s first solo show. With this exhibition, the Whitney highlights that Owens is a master and influential figure in her own time, and possibly the most innovative painter of the past two decades.
