Curated by Scott Rothkopf

What else can painting do? With wide-eyed curiosity, maverick humor, and infectious glee, Owens continues to pose this query, producing ambitious, technically rigorous, and surprising pieces unlike those of any other painter of her generation (or the next). Her works both rally and splinter the medium’s history of craft and illusionism: Haptic possibility drives her; democratic intelligence and sly pop subject matter ground her. For this LA master, painting is large-scale installation, embroidered silk-screened textile, ticking timepiece, site-specific manifesto, private treasure hunt, and eye-popping, mind-bending, gut-busting karaoke house party. This midcareer survey spans the mid-1990s to the present with approximately sixty paintings, wallpaper works, and new handmade artist’s books. The catalogue features some forty texts, documentation of ephemera, and correspondence that will flesh out Owens’s dynamic studio life, career trajectory, and far-reaching collaborative activities—collectively demonstrating her indispensability within the thriving community that orbits her. Travels to the Dallas Museum of Art, Mar. 25–July 29, 2018; Geffen Contemporary at MoCA, Los Angeles, Nov. 2018–Mar. 2019. 

— Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer