LIZA LOU

In a career spanning three decades, Lou has become widely known for introducing beads as a contemporary fine art medium. Her persistent experimentation has challenged hierarchies and injected humour and glamour into a Feminist vision. Lou’s project is an open-ended investigation into the metaphoric possibilities of a humble material to draw attention to the poetic and painful dimensions of labor, the artistic process, and the complexities of American life.

In this new series of paintings, Lou renders what appear as quick, painterly gestures in grain-by-grain minutiae. Beads naturally resist blending or mixing; thus, Lou renews Frank Stella’s admonition to ‘paint as good as in the tube,’ applying pure colour directly to canvas. The placement and colour of each paint stroke is predicated in the moment, purely in reaction to the stroke preceding it. In an aesthetic call and response, colours are superimposed or juxtaposed, revelling in joyful adjacencies. Bright chroma radiates across the canvas in vivid jabs while lattice work builds up and propels itself outward. At close range, the tiny, individual 3-dimensional pieces of factory-made colour jostle each other, resulting in micro explosions that register as surprise, offering a new take on American Abstract painting.

Known for her community-based approach, Lou’s current work emerges from a period of solitude spent living and working alone in the Mojave desert in Southern California. From this undiluted experience in nature, Lou reveals a close look at the act of painting itself, magnifying granular gestures and, as she has described, ‘listening to the material.’ Together, Lou’s exhibitions at Lehmann Maupin and the Brooklyn Museum provide portals into the evolution of Lou’s decades-long practice—one centred in materiality, invention, and possibility.