Artist in Residence:
Eve Fowler
May 1–31, 2016
Eve Fowler
as it if it is to be
May 27 – July 2, 2016
as it if it is to be – to light is to set burning, to ignite, to turn on. Carefully chosen language hints toward the enchanted desires of a reader as Eve Fowler re-imagines modernist writer Gertrude Stein's rhythmic texts into solitary quotations. She creates a sensitive colloquy that, through monochrome canvases, acts as a whisper between lovers. The intimate interaction is put on public display; banner-sized works envelop the viewing space. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer also enters into a book: the texts wrap around and encompass... It is an experience of decoding and looking back on our own reminiscences, applying Stein's words and Fowler's careful arrangements to personal histories.
Fowler extracts, cuts, and pastes excerpts from Stein's poetic writing to form new dialogues, a relationship she has developed since 2010 through the making of her urban Colby poster series entitled A Spectacle and Nothing Strange (2012) sampled from Stein's enigmatic Tender Buttons (1914). She breaks temporal conventions, playfully pushing language out of the book-form and across physical spaces. Black-on-black or white-on-white silkscreened canvases obscure the texts within their own shadows, like a clandestine romance just hidden from view. Coyly mimicking the immersive intimacy between novelist and novel, and then reader and book, Fowler's large-scale installations are erupting, while the text reads as lulling and seductive.
Fowler is the director of Artist Curated Projects, a project space she operates in her Los Angeles apartment. ACP hosts exhibitions that represent dialogs between artists and groups of artists. The space eschews traditional curatorial and institutional structures to support more informal, intimate, and generous conversation within her community. Influenced by her curatorial practice, Fourteen30 will host Fowler for a month-long residency at the gallery prior to as it if it is to be. Making work within Portland, the residency is an informal way to develop the same practical insights and relationships through living with art and creating a life.
Eve Fowler (b. in 1964, New York) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA in photography from Yale University in 1992 and received her BA in Journalism from Temple University in 1986. Recent solo exhibitions include the difference is spreading, Mier Gallery, Los Angeles (2015); A Spectacle and Nothing Strange, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge (2014); IT IS SO, IT IS SO, The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, Houston (2014). Recent group exhibitions include Sites of Reason: A Selection of Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014) and A Difference of Very Little Difference, Artspace, Sydney (2015). Fowler’s work has been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The New Museum, New York; The Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.
Eve Fowler
May 1–31, 2016
Eve Fowler
as it if it is to be
May 27 – July 2, 2016
as it if it is to be – to light is to set burning, to ignite, to turn on. Carefully chosen language hints toward the enchanted desires of a reader as Eve Fowler re-imagines modernist writer Gertrude Stein's rhythmic texts into solitary quotations. She creates a sensitive colloquy that, through monochrome canvases, acts as a whisper between lovers. The intimate interaction is put on public display; banner-sized works envelop the viewing space. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer also enters into a book: the texts wrap around and encompass... It is an experience of decoding and looking back on our own reminiscences, applying Stein's words and Fowler's careful arrangements to personal histories.
Fowler extracts, cuts, and pastes excerpts from Stein's poetic writing to form new dialogues, a relationship she has developed since 2010 through the making of her urban Colby poster series entitled A Spectacle and Nothing Strange (2012) sampled from Stein's enigmatic Tender Buttons (1914). She breaks temporal conventions, playfully pushing language out of the book-form and across physical spaces. Black-on-black or white-on-white silkscreened canvases obscure the texts within their own shadows, like a clandestine romance just hidden from view. Coyly mimicking the immersive intimacy between novelist and novel, and then reader and book, Fowler's large-scale installations are erupting, while the text reads as lulling and seductive.
Fowler is the director of Artist Curated Projects, a project space she operates in her Los Angeles apartment. ACP hosts exhibitions that represent dialogs between artists and groups of artists. The space eschews traditional curatorial and institutional structures to support more informal, intimate, and generous conversation within her community. Influenced by her curatorial practice, Fourteen30 will host Fowler for a month-long residency at the gallery prior to as it if it is to be. Making work within Portland, the residency is an informal way to develop the same practical insights and relationships through living with art and creating a life.
Eve Fowler (b. in 1964, New York) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA in photography from Yale University in 1992 and received her BA in Journalism from Temple University in 1986. Recent solo exhibitions include the difference is spreading, Mier Gallery, Los Angeles (2015); A Spectacle and Nothing Strange, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge (2014); IT IS SO, IT IS SO, The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, Houston (2014). Recent group exhibitions include Sites of Reason: A Selection of Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014) and A Difference of Very Little Difference, Artspace, Sydney (2015). Fowler’s work has been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The New Museum, New York; The Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.