Rick Lowe

3 Jun-28 Jun 2025

Overview

Gagosian is pleased to announce an installation of new works on paper by Rick Lowe, on view from June 3 to 28 at the Burlington Arcade gallery. The exhibition coincides with the presentation of his large-scale painting Cavafy Remains (2024) in the Unlimited sector of Art Basel 2025, from June 16 to 22.

As part of his mutable practice, Lowe works in the studio together with collaborative “social sculpture” initiatives designed to catalyze civic transformation. Paper is a key material in his improvisatory exploration of varied modes of abstraction. Combining painting and collage, the densely worked, layered compositions establish networks of shape and color that link painterly forms with geometric motifs.

Lowe marshals lines and shapes into configurations that extend across the works’ surfaces, abstracting from geographic and social relationships between people and places. The compositions’ systematic complexities echo maps, typography, and the games of dominoes that the artist enjoys with local residents while developing his projects. “I did not know the reason I was drawn to tracing the domino patterns,” Lowe recalls, “until one day I realized that the patterns were simply mapping knowledge of the time I spent with the people I played with.”

The palette of each work is unique, their saturated colors and bold contrasts uniting in dynamic arrangements. Some works maintain rectilinear structures, adhering to right angles and evoking the grids of urban blocks and archaeological sites. Lowe develops dense matrices of interconnected diagonal lines in other works, and extends his exploration of arcing and spiraling forms that he pursued in The Arch within the Arc, his 2024 exhibition at Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice.

Publications featuring Lowe’s work will be available in the ground-floor Gagosian Shop, including the recently published catalogue for Hic Sunt Dracones (Here Lay Dragons): Mapping the Unknown: A Project by Rick Lowe, a 2023 exhibition at Benaki Museum / Pireos 138, Athens.

Press

Rick Lowe - press release
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