Liza Lou FAQ

FAQ presents a new body of work in which tiny glass beads and oil paint cohabit, layering two different temporalities on one canvas to examine the heroics of the painted gesture and mid-century abstraction. Lou utilises her signature unit of art-making to denaturalise the spontaneity of the brushstroke, juxtaposing every drip and spatter with painstaking care and attention. Translating fluid strokes into cell-by-cell decision-making, she forges a new experience of painting, grounded in the push and pull between, in her own words, ‘absolute control and total abandon.’ Lou’s paintings pursue a deeply conceptual investigation into material and what comprises a paint body or a colour. ‘The work is about amplification, it’s about making things more ideal,’ she says. ‘There’s a poem by Pessoa where he writes about wanting flowers to be more flowers than flowers, and in this body of work I’m using beads as a way to make paint more paint than paint.’