I find it really helpful to not be very logical. I think that as an artist, it’s been so useful to live in my head and my world of making… I’m always interested in how we keep our morale as creative people. How do we keep our spirits up? How do we face politics today? How do we keep doing what we do in a meaningful way? How do we sustain meaning?… I think failure and being on the outside has absolutely been imperative for me as an artist. To feel like I’m part of a club would make me feel like I’m not an artist. I truly don’t understand young people who come out of art school and go straight to the gallery system. I think that’s so dangerous and so painful because the really juicy thing starts to happen when you’re around our age. For me, I just turned 50 this last year and it’s so wonderful. I mean, from a personal place to have a relationship to making that is so deep. I’ve had my heart broken and been left out. I’ve gone through every permutation, but my work is still there. It still speaks to me and I feel as though I’m making the most important work of my life, and it has nothing to do with statistics or what anyone’s telling me. — Liza Lou, PARIS LA 17*
DESIRE LINES—an exhibition of new and recent work by Lou—is now on view in London.
In addition, Lou’s work will be featured in Lehmann Maupin’s Frieze London booth. See link below for gallery details.
Through November 6.
Lehmann Maupin
1 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, London.
See Liza Lou in conversation with Tim Marlow.
*“Evidence of Things Not Seen: Andrea Fraser, Liza Lou, Shinique Smith, and Susan Unterberg in Conversation with Helen Molesworth,” PARIS LA 17 (2021–2022), 8–21.
“Desire lines” is a term commonly used in landscape architecture planning to name the egress that occurs naturally as people or animals move instinctually through an environment, creating unplanned paths. (Gallery note.)
Liza Lou, Desire Lines, Lehmann Maupin, London, September 15, 2021–November 6, 2021, from top: Into the Mystic, 2021, glass beads and thread mounted on canvas; Not Dark Yet, 2021, glass beads and thread mounted on canvas; Almost Home, 2009–2011, glass beads and thread mounted on stretcher frame; Going to California, 2021, glass beads and thread mounted on steel stretcher frame; Bronze Aggregate, 2018, glass beads, thread, and epoxy resin; Lost Highway, 2021, oil paint, glass beads, and thread mounted on canvas. All canvas and stretcher frame work photographed by Joshua White. Images © Liza Lou, courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin.
