Liza Lou: Classification and Nomenclature of Clouds

Lehmann Maupin - New York

By Taliesin Thomas

During the course of her artistic career, the American artist Liza Lou (b. 1969, New York and raised in Los Angeles) has devoted her creative energy to a single material in magical, myriad ways-beads. Transforming this traditional ‘craft’ object into an enchanting medium to realize bold and bewitching forms of art, Lou’s beadwork is a mesmerizing aesthetic in a class all its own. Her latest solo show at Lehmann Maupin in New York, “Liza Lou: Classification and Nomenclature of Clouds,“ suggests her exploration of beads is both ever expanding and ever more exquisite. The exhibit is Lou’s first show in Manhattan in over a decade-also the inaugural exhibit for Lehmann Maupin’s new location in Chelsea-and consisted of recent paintings, sculptures, drawings and video.

Lou dropped out of the program at the San Francisco Art Institute when it became clear that her professors did not embrace her signature beadwork. Since then, Lou has forged a singular path as an artist who has consistently employed this medium to create unforgettable works that are often realized with millions of small beads. Lou was a breakout star when she exhibited her dazzling Kitchen (1991-1996) installation at the New Museum in New York in 1996, an artwork consisting of countless colorful glass beads meticulously arranged as a full-scale replica of a domestic cookery scene. (Lou’s Kitchen took five years to complete and now resides in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.) She was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Genius Fellowship in 2002 and her work has since been the subject of numerous solo and group shows around the world.

In 2005, Lou moved to Durban, South Africa where she set up a studio and began working with a team of local Zulu women to help realize her labor-intensive projects. Hand-sewn by these African assistants, the small beaded cloth panels that comprise the paintings included in this exhibition are haphazardly covered in paint and partially smashed to reveal the stained threads of beads underneath. This act of delicate destruction suggests the preciousness of this material can be altered to reveal an even greater level of agency and grace. The disfiguration confesses the fineness of those structures, and works such as Pyrocumulus (2018) and Stratus Fractus (2018)-two square paintings of gently ‘broken’ clouded forms-represent a new direction in Lou’s devotion to beads.

Liza Lou, Pyrocumulus, 2018, oil paint on woven glass beads on canvas, 55.75” x 56.25” x 3.” Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul. Photo: Joshua White.

Referencing the vision of clouds from Los Angeles and Durban as her source of inspiration, Lou’s monumental The Clouds (2015-2018) is the magnum opus of this show. This large-scale work reveals the extent of her unwavering fidelity to beadwork in all its glory. Consisting of 600 beaded cloths and stretching 50 feet across and 23 feet high, this extraordinary painting is a sublime statement. Lou’s repetitive patterning is not only witnessed in the beaded works themselves, but also in a short video titled Drawing Instrument (2018). The video is a close-up perspective of a pen as it draws circles on paper with a recording of Lou’s mantra-like singing while creating these consecutive circulars-the result is the abstract painting Drawing Instrument II (2018).

Lou’s ability to orchestrate beads into glistening Pop-art style objects or delicate states of beaded rapture-as in the case of The Clouds at Lehmann Maupin-reflects the potential for ‘craft’ to transcend its materialness while offering a glimpse at the painstaking process that informs the work. Lou considers her loyalty to beads both a ‘burden’ and ‘opportunity’-in either case her dedication to beaded forms of beauty demands our deepest reverence and respect.

(September 6 - October 27, 2018)

Taliesin Thomas is an artist-philosopher, writer, educator, and aesthetician based in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the founding director of AW Asia (2007-present). She has lectured widely on contemporary Chinese art and has been published in ARTPULSE, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (JCCA) and ArtAsiaPacific magazine. She holds an MA from Columbia University and is currently a PhD candidate in art theory and philosophy at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.