Laura Owens: Rerun

Laura Owens (b. 1970) is known for her ranging and experimental approach to the medium of painting. Her work embraces a breadth of sources from the avant-garde to the popular to the decorative. Owens grew up close to Cleveland in Norwalk, Ohio, and as a teenager spent many hours studying the Cleveland Museum of Art’s encyclopedic collection. Having lived in Los Angeles for the past three decades, she now returns to Cleveland to develop an exhibition in collaboration with high school students participating in the CMA’s Arts Mastery program, Currently Under Curation. They are Jamal Carter, Xyhair Davis, Skylar Fleming, Yomi Gonzalez, Joseph Hlavac, Agatha Mathoslah, Arica McKinney, Maya Peroune, and Deonta Steele.

Owens was recently the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017–18), which traveled to the Dallas Museum of Art (2018) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018–19). Other recent solo exhibitions were at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2016); Secession, Vienna (2015); and Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2011). Owens studied at the California Institute of the Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design.