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Lot Essay
this young kid just pulled the rug out from my whole career up until that time….He just comes in and tells me, “While your work shows what’s happening in our communities, we don’t need that. If artists are creative, why can’t they create solutions?” That just shattered things for me.Rick Lowe (F. Ologundudu “‘That Just Shattered Things for Me’: Rick Lowe on the Moment He Realized His Art Had to Escape the Studio to Have Real-World Impact,” artnet news, 19 September 2022)
In Rick Lowe’s beautiful and complex Untitled #071421, we see the interconnectedness of all things. At five feet by seven feet, the present work is an expansive cosmos drawn from the artist’s recent series that represents his return to painting and collage. Reminiscent of Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-1943) or Jacob Lawrence’s Red Earth – Georgia (1947), it is a layered map of pigment evocative of time, space, and emotion. Its red, green, and yellow tributaries crisscross throughout the monumental canvas like rushing streams, engaging us in the interspace between abstraction and social justice.
Untitled #071421 is based on a photograph of a game of dominoes from above, not unlike Aleksander Rodchenko’s birds-eye view imagery. Lowe sees dominoes, checkers, and chess as channels of social exchange, since they often take place in parks, gardens, and other public spaces around the world. He says, “When you’re sitting with people playing cards or dominoes or checkers, where everybody’s just relaxed, that’s when you really get to know them” (R. Lowe, quoted in A. Bradley, “From Houston to Athens, Rick Lowe Takes His Social Sculpture Global, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, June 7, 2023). Therefore, Untitled #071421 illuminates a moment of empathy, camaraderie, and play, even as it gestures toward the regimented shapes and rigors of city life. As a complement to the legibility of his more squarely political work, like his game-changing Project Row Houses, Lowe’s paintings are self-reflexively beyond categorization. He explains, “In the painting studio, I can go back to raising the questions without answering them. The work is allowed to be much more open-ended” (R. Lowe, quoted in L. Rees, “Creative Mind: Rick Lowe,” Galerie Magazine, March 18, 2022)
The present work is a standout painting within Lowe’s oeuvre. Its muscular colors “give the viewer the sense that they are looking at a heat map superimposed on the vascular system of roads, buildings, and plumbing that make up a metropolitan city” (D. Cassady, “Rick Lowe’s Work at Gagosian’s Frieze LA Booth Pulls You into Its Atmosphere,” ARTnews, February 17, 2023). While Lowe is already celebrated as an artist whose chosen media are activism and community organizing, his career in painting and collage is coming into view as an equal and necessary part of his social practice. With Untitled #071421, Lowe reminds us that materials are as important as subject matter. The canvas itself becomes a domino—a metaphor for relationships, touch, and community. And as the dominoes fall, they create a ballet, just like the choreography of Untitled #071421. A new configuration emerges, ready to be lovingly rebuilt.
Lowe’s nearly 30-year career has seen numerous accolades and exhibitions around the world. President Barack Obama appointed Lowe to the National Council on the Arts in 2013 and in 2014 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. He recently mounted two exhibitions in Athens including Hic Sunt Dracones (Here Lay Dragons). Mapping the Unknown: A Project by Rick Lowe at the Benaki Museum/Pireos 138. Rick Lowe: Notes on the Great Migration at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago closed earlier this year to critical acclaim. Another dominoes painting was acquired by the Menil Collection, Houston, TX in 2020, and Lowe’s work is also held by the Tate Modern, London, the UBS Art Collection, Zürich, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
In Rick Lowe’s beautiful and complex Untitled #071421, we see the interconnectedness of all things. At five feet by seven feet, the present work is an expansive cosmos drawn from the artist’s recent series that represents his return to painting and collage. Reminiscent of Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-1943) or Jacob Lawrence’s Red Earth – Georgia (1947), it is a layered map of pigment evocative of time, space, and emotion. Its red, green, and yellow tributaries crisscross throughout the monumental canvas like rushing streams, engaging us in the interspace between abstraction and social justice.
Untitled #071421 is based on a photograph of a game of dominoes from above, not unlike Aleksander Rodchenko’s birds-eye view imagery. Lowe sees dominoes, checkers, and chess as channels of social exchange, since they often take place in parks, gardens, and other public spaces around the world. He says, “When you’re sitting with people playing cards or dominoes or checkers, where everybody’s just relaxed, that’s when you really get to know them” (R. Lowe, quoted in A. Bradley, “From Houston to Athens, Rick Lowe Takes His Social Sculpture Global, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, June 7, 2023). Therefore, Untitled #071421 illuminates a moment of empathy, camaraderie, and play, even as it gestures toward the regimented shapes and rigors of city life. As a complement to the legibility of his more squarely political work, like his game-changing Project Row Houses, Lowe’s paintings are self-reflexively beyond categorization. He explains, “In the painting studio, I can go back to raising the questions without answering them. The work is allowed to be much more open-ended” (R. Lowe, quoted in L. Rees, “Creative Mind: Rick Lowe,” Galerie Magazine, March 18, 2022)
The present work is a standout painting within Lowe’s oeuvre. Its muscular colors “give the viewer the sense that they are looking at a heat map superimposed on the vascular system of roads, buildings, and plumbing that make up a metropolitan city” (D. Cassady, “Rick Lowe’s Work at Gagosian’s Frieze LA Booth Pulls You into Its Atmosphere,” ARTnews, February 17, 2023). While Lowe is already celebrated as an artist whose chosen media are activism and community organizing, his career in painting and collage is coming into view as an equal and necessary part of his social practice. With Untitled #071421, Lowe reminds us that materials are as important as subject matter. The canvas itself becomes a domino—a metaphor for relationships, touch, and community. And as the dominoes fall, they create a ballet, just like the choreography of Untitled #071421. A new configuration emerges, ready to be lovingly rebuilt.
Lowe’s nearly 30-year career has seen numerous accolades and exhibitions around the world. President Barack Obama appointed Lowe to the National Council on the Arts in 2013 and in 2014 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. He recently mounted two exhibitions in Athens including Hic Sunt Dracones (Here Lay Dragons). Mapping the Unknown: A Project by Rick Lowe at the Benaki Museum/Pireos 138. Rick Lowe: Notes on the Great Migration at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago closed earlier this year to critical acclaim. Another dominoes painting was acquired by the Menil Collection, Houston, TX in 2020, and Lowe’s work is also held by the Tate Modern, London, the UBS Art Collection, Zürich, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.