Liza Lou

(Hardback)

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The most comprehensive book on the work of Liza Lou, whose popular and critically acclaimed installations made entirely of beads consider the important themes of women, community, and the valorisation of labour.

Liza Lou first gained attention in 1996 when her room-sized sculpture Kitchen was shown at the New Museum in New York. Representing five years of individual labor, this groundbreaking work subverted standards of art by introducing glass beads as a fine art material. The project blurred the rigid boundary between fine art and craft, and established Lou's long-standing exploration of materiality, process, and beauty. Working within a craft mtier has led the artist to work in a variety of socially engaged settings, from community groups in Los Angeles, to a collective she founded in Durban, South Africa. Over the past fifteen years, Lou has focused on a poetic approach to abstraction as a way to highlight the process underlying her work.

In this comprehensive volume that considers the entirety of Lous singular vision, curators, art historians, and artists offer important perspectives on the breadth of the work.

Author Bio

Julia Bryan-Wilson is professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Cathleen Chaffee is chief curator of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

Glenn Adamson is a curator and writer who works at the intersection of craft, design history, and contemporary art.

Elisabeth Sherman is assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.