Lehmann Maupin Announces INGXUIBE by Liza Lou

Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce ingxube, the gallery's first solo exhibition for Liza Lou, and the artist's first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. The Los Angeles-based artist divides her practice between studios in California and in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, where she established a studio with a team of 30 Zulu artisans in 2005. This close relationship has enabled Lou to further develop her signature medium of glass beads by collectively producing intricately beaded canvases, sculptures, and large-scale installations. For this exhibition, Lou will present new work from her ingxube series, with six colorful minimalist paintings comprised entirely of woven beads. The gallery will host a press preview on Wednesday, January 18, and an opening reception for the artist on Thursday, January 19, from 6-8 PM.

Lou's work can be interpreted as a meditation on labor and process that welcomes variance and accident to illuminate repetition. For more than two decades, she has worked with glass beads as her primary medium. From working alone on large-scale sculptures to developing unique community strategies, she investigates the beauty of labor, challenges the accepted definitions of art and craft, and addresses the socio-political issues of gender, class, race, and community. For her best-known installation, Kitchen (1991-96), now in the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, she worked alone over five years to create a life-sized replica of an American kitchen, complete with brand-name household products, in which every surface was meticulously overlaid with small glass beads. The monumental piece established Lou as a sculptor and solidified her commitment to highlighting the often-invisible labor of women.

The ingxube series exemplifies Lou's sustained interest in pushing the structural and aesthetic possibilities of her material while extending the creative conversation with her South African studio community. The Zulu word "ingxube" translates loosely to "random" or "mixture," which alludes to the method of production of these works. Using selections of different colored beads that she blends into custom color groupings, much like mixing paint pigments, Lou assigns a variety of strips to be woven by the artisans in prescribed dimensions, requiring only that beads be chosen randomly. Selecting from the resulting hundreds of strips, Lou then builds and weaves each into a 'canvas.' Minimalist and abstract, they are deeply influenced by landscape and also reference the color field works of artists aligned with the New York School during the 1960s. Similar to these artists, Lou's subtle striations of color achieve a sense of depth and light moving across the pixilated surface of each canvas.

About the artist
Liza Lou (b. 1969, New York; lives and works in Los Angeles and KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) has had solo exhibitions of her work organized at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY (2015); Wichita Museum of Art, Wichita, KS (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (2013); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2011); Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany (2011); Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2001); and Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH (2000). Select group exhibitions and biennials featuring her work have included Home Land Security, FOR-SITE Foundation, San Francisco (2016); Sleight of Hand: Painting and Illusion, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (2014); Now What?, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (2010); The Artist's Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2010); and Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, curated by Jeff Koons, New Museum, New York (2010). Her work is in numerous international public and private collections, including DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; De Young Museum, San Francisco; François Pinault Foundation, Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Lou is the recipient of the 2013 Anonymous Was A Woman Award and a 2002 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

About Lehmann Maupin
Founded in 1996 by partners Rachel Lehmann and David Maupin, Lehmann Maupin has fostered the careers of a diverse group of internationally renowned artists, both emerging and established, working in multiple disciplines and across varied media. With three locations-two in New York and one in Hong Kong-the gallery represents artists from the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and the Middle East. Known for championing artists who create groundbreaking and challenging forms of visual expression, Lehmann Maupin presents work highlighting personal investigations and individual narratives through conceptual approaches that often address such issues as gender, class, religion, history, politics, and globalism.