October 6, 2004
Quick take: Laura Owens in Philadelphia
Give Laura Owens credit for consistency. In what is to my knowledge the first use of embroidery in her art practice, her new medium is treated in the exact same manner she treats paint: The six nearly-identical works on view (a seventh was temporarily down during my visit) deploy a wide range of threads with her signature playfulness of application. Each work depicts a single tree atop a pile of blue and green rocks, surrounded by wispy clouds and falling leaves; nearly every element pulls double duty as representation and as abstract shard of color against the light background. Seven copies of the image, familiar from other recent paintings, were printed onto silk and then hand-embroidered by the artist. There are slight changes from work to work—a spider hangs down from a branch in one, extra flowers crop up at the base of the tree in another, a decorative blue leaf and a woman have been added to a third and fourth—that encourage a playful back-and-forth in the gallery. There is a tension between the variety of sewing techniques (cross-stitching, running thread in multiple directions, etc.) and the monotony of the image's repetition. These works, while not the best I've seen by Owens or the most innovative I've seen at the Fabric Workshop, are nonetheless undeniably and reassuringly hers. (On view through 11/06.)