Untitled

Often tinged with an inventive sense of wonder and, at times, humor, Laura Owens’s idiosyncratic canvases quote from such diverse sources as modernist movements—Color Field painting, Op Art, and Pattern and Decoration—the work of artists like Henri Rousseau and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and textile art and embroidery. Utilizing a wide range of techniques and materials, the artist’s process includes a long preparation period; she explained, "Some people have commented that that it’s more of an old-fashioned way of working, through sketches and tests where I know about three-quarters of what the painting will look like, and then I make it." This unapologetically theatrical work features costumed characters that look like they have stepped out of a production by the Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer (1888–1943). Formally, the canvas resembles a sketchbook drawing, but the scale implies that it is instead a playful homage to Bauhaus theater design.