Ohne Titel

Translated titleUntitled
Year2015
Material Oil, silkscreen ink, Flashe vinyl paint, charcoal, acrylic and gesso on linen
Dimensions350.5 x 264 cm
Year of acquisition2015
Inventory numberUAB 931-932
On viewGround floor -1.3

More about the artwork

This diptych by Laura Owens is dominated by two enlarged newspaper pages that were silk-screened onto the canvas. Some sections look as if they were placed under a magnifying glass, others have been cut out. Underneath, a delicate drawing emerges. Spread across the pages, there are sweeping, sometimes impasto brushstrokes—as if Owens had used the newspaper to wipe her brush and then enlarged the respective sections. But instead, this is a sophisticated collage that renders it almost impossible to distinguish between what is painted, what is drawn, and what is printed; what is “real” and what is “fake.” Some of the brushstrokes’ shadows are in fact printed—and thus not at all traces of spontaneous painterly gestures. Additionally, newspaper articles and pictures have been reworked and partially replaced with more recent information. With this game of deception, Owens questions the authenticity of digitally-circulated data, but she also stages a dialogue between painting and digital technology. For her, these two modes of image production challenge and enrich each other.