Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, it’s high time to talk about Laura Owens, the artist who joyfully shakes up your well-meaning certainties about contemporary art. From her studio in Los Angeles, she orchestrates a silent revolution that shatters all your comfortable little boxes.
Did you think painting was dead? That after abstraction, minimalism, and conceptual art, there was nothing left but to recycle old recipes? Let me tell you how this Ohio native, with her sharp humor and brilliant intelligence, reinvents the pictorial medium with each new brushstroke.
Owens stands out for her stubborn refusal of dogmas. She cheerfully plunders art history, borrows from popular cultures, digests technological innovations, and transforms it all into works that defy categorization. But beware, don’t be fooled by the seemingly lightness of her work. Beneath the flashy colors and playful patterns lies a profound reflection on the very nature of art and our relationship to images.
Let’s take the time to explore the concept of “simulacrum” developed by Jean Baudrillard, as it brilliantly illuminates Owens’ work. For the French philosopher, our era is characterized by the proliferation of images that refer only to other images, creating a vertigo of representation where the very notion of original loses its meaning. Owens’ paintings fully embrace this postmodern condition, but with an unexpected twist: they turn it into a jubilant playground.
Look at her recent works, where she incorporates printing plates from newspapers from the 1940s discovered during the renovation of her studio. These fragments of history are digitized, manipulated in Photoshop, screen-printed, and then reworked by hand. The original and the copy, the manual and the mechanical, the historical and the contemporary intertwine until they become indistinguishable. This is precisely what Baudrillard described as hyperreality, but Owens transforms this potentially anxiety-inducing condition into a source of wonder.
This approach is particularly spectacular in her monumental installations, such as the one presented at the Whitney Museum in 2017. The paintings unfolded like a visual labyrinth where each viewer traced their own interpretative path. The misleading shadows, the contradictory perspective effects, the overlapping patterns created an experience that shook up our image-reading habits.
A second philosophical concept resonates powerfully in Owens’ work: that of the “death of the author” theorized by Roland Barthes. According to the French literary critic, the meaning of a work does not reside in the intentions of its creator but in its interpretation by the viewer. Owens takes this idea to its furthest extremes. Her canvases become spaces of freedom where references accumulate without hierarchy: a stroke reminiscent of Matisse coexists with a cheap wallpaper pattern, an abstract expressionist gesture dialogues with a children’s book illustration.
This radical democratization of visual references is not the result of chance or easy relativism. It is an aesthetic and political position that questions traditional hierarchies of art. Owens refuses to take on the role of the demiurge artist who would impose her vision on the viewer. Rather, she creates works that function as complex mirrors, reflecting back a different image to each one depending on their angle of approach.
Take, for example, her 2012-2013 series, where oversized brushstrokes float like ribbons in space, their shadows creating an illusion of depth while emphasizing their artificiality. Vichy plaid patterns, emblems of domestic kitsch, serve as the backdrop for these grand pictorial gestures. It’s as if she is saying to us: “Yes, all of this is artificial, so what? Isn’t it wonderful?”
This pure joy in the act of painting is contagious. Owens does not hesitate to use electric colors, bold decorative patterns, spectacular visual effects. She rejects the tortured artist posture, preferring that of the magician who reveals her tricks while continuing to amaze us. This attitude is not naïve, but a sophisticated form of sincerity.
The artist takes her reflection even further in her approach to the exhibition space. At 356 Mission, the space she managed in Los Angeles from 2013 to 2019, she created environments that radically transformed our experience of painting. The works were no longer isolated objects to contemplate, but elements of a total experience where architecture, light, and even the movement of visitors contributed to the aesthetic experience. Her use of space is remarkable. In her installations, the paintings are not simply hung on the wall; they activate the surrounding space. The shadows create virtual extensions of the works, the patterns seem to extend beyond the confines of the frame, and perspective effects transform our perception of architecture. The exhibition becomes a complex choreography where the viewer is invited to participate actively.
This participatory dimension is fundamental in her work. Owens’ paintings are not authoritative statements on what art should be. They are invitations to play, to explore, to question our certainties. She creates works that function as awakening devices, pushing us to look beyond appearances.
Her technique of trompe-l’œil is particularly revealing in this regard. The shadows in her works do not simply serve to create an illusion of depth but become autonomous elements that play with our perception of space. These shadows are sometimes painted with photographic precision, sometimes stylized like in a comic book, creating a constant tension between different levels of representation.
This playful approach to representation finds particular resonance in her treatment of natural motifs. Her paintings of flowers and animals do not seek botanical or zoological realism. On the contrary, they embrace a form of fantasy reminiscent of children’s book illustrations or medieval tapestries. But again, this apparent naïveté hides a sophisticated reflection on the nature of representation.
In her recent works, Owens explores new dimensions of the pictorial experience. She integrates sound elements, mechanical devices, and light effects that turn her paintings into true immersive environments. These technological innovations are not gadgets but natural extensions of her research on the possibilities of painting in the digital age.
Her engagement with technology is particularly interesting. Unlike many contemporary artists who oppose the digital to the manual, she sees these two domains as complementary. Her paintings incorporate digital printing techniques, Photoshop effects, computer-generated patterns, but these elements are always in dialogue with traditional pictorial gestures. The digital becomes one tool among others in her artist’s toolbox, alongside oil painting or screen printing.
This hybridization of techniques reflects a broader vision of art as a space of infinite possibilities. For Owens, there is no hierarchy among different means of expression. A gestural paint stroke can coexist with a mechanically printed pattern, a reference to art history can dialogue with an emoji. This democratization of references and techniques is not an easy relativism but a deep aesthetic and ethical position. This approach bears witness to a profound understanding of our era, where the digital is no longer a novelty but a constitutive element of our daily experience. Owens’ paintings reflect this reality without nostalgia or excessive technophilia. They show how painting can absorb and transform technological innovations while preserving its specificity.
Humor plays a central role in this endeavor of breaking down barriers. Owens’ paintings are often funny, not in a cynical or ironic way, but with authentic joy in the absurd and the unexpected. This humorous dimension is not superficial: it is an integral part of her strategy to destabilize our expectations and open us up to new ways of seeing.
Take her series of paintings based on grids and geometric patterns, for example. At first glance, they seem to fit into the modernist tradition of geometric abstraction. But upon closer inspection, we discover ruptures, distortions, and figurative elements that disrupt this reading. The grids transform into school graph paper, geometric shapes become windows or screens, and swathes of color reveal digital textures.
This constant strategy of disrupting the viewer’s expectations is not arbitrary. It reflects a deep conviction: art should not comfort us in our certainties, but rather challenge us to question our habits of perception. Each painting by Owens is an invitation to slow down, to observe carefully, to discover the multiple layers of meaning and references that hide within.
Laura Owens’ work reminds us that painting is not an exhausted medium, but a constantly expanding territory. She shows us that it is possible to be both profoundly serious in artistic practice and joyfully irreverent in approach. Her paintings are invitations to rethink not only what art can be today, but also how we can experience and talk about it. In an art world often dominated by cynicism and theory, Owens offers a refreshing alternative: a practice that embraces complexity while celebrating the pure joy of creation. Her works remind us that art can be both intellectually stimulating and viscerally satisfying, conceptually rigorous and visually enchanting.
So yes, you bunch of snobs, Laura Owens shakes up your well-ordered categories and your comfortable theories. And this is exactly what contemporary art needs: less posture and more possibilities, less dogma and more discoveries. From her studio in Los Angeles, she continues to push the boundaries of what painting can be, inviting us all to join her in this joyful and rigorous exploration of the infinite possibilities of art.
