Author: Lou, Liza; Prose, Francine; Porter, Jenelle
Title: Liza Lou: Classification and Nomenclature of Clouds Exhibition Catalog
Description: New York, NY, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 2018. Softcover. Quarto. Softcover. Illustrated covers. 56 pages : color illustrations ; 31 cm. "The title of the exhibition is inspired by amateur meteorologist Luke Howard's Essay on the Modification of Clouds, which met with great acclaim when it was presented as a lecture in 1802. The poet Mark Strand recently wrote, "Clouds are thoughts without words," yet Howard was able to give names to the ungraspable. By classifying and naming the clouds, he influenced painters and poets alike. Observing daily atmospheric phenomena in the two cities where the artist divides her time--Durban, South Africa, where clouds are often tumultuous, and Los Angeles, where skies are mostly blue--Lou began to make cloud paintings en plein air. This exhibition features the resulting monumentally scaled work, The Clouds (2015-2018), recently exhibited in the 21st Biennale of Sydney. Stretching 50 feet across by 23 feet high in Lehmann Maupin's new gallery space, The Clouds is comprised of a grid of 600 beaded cloths, which are hand sewn in her Durban studio. These cloths become the surface upon which the artist paints and then partially smashes the beads away with a hammer, revealing the paint-stained network of thread beneath. The materiality of the cloths is in stark contrast with the groundlessness of passing clouds."--Exhibition press release. VG+ .

Keywords: American Artists ; Lou, Liza ; ;


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