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Rick Lowe

Rick Lowe, Rotation (Revolution), 2023 Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 144 × 324 inches (365.8 × 823 cm)© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Rotation (Revolution), 2023

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 144 × 324 inches (365.8 × 823 cm)
© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Victoria Square Project: Open Borders, 2022 Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 84 × 84 inches (213.4 × 213.4 cm)© Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Thomas DuBrock

Rick Lowe, Victoria Square Project: Open Borders, 2022

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 84 × 84 inches (213.4 × 213.4 cm)
© Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Thomas DuBrock

Rick Lowe, Project Row Houses: If Artists Are Creative Why Can’t They Create Solutions, 2021 Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 144 × 192 inches (365.8 × 487.7 cm), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York© Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Thomas DuBrock

Rick Lowe, Project Row Houses: If Artists Are Creative Why Can’t They Create Solutions, 2021

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 144 × 192 inches (365.8 × 487.7 cm), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
© Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Thomas DuBrock

Rick Lowe, Project Row Houses: Biggers and Beuys, 2021 Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 96 × 72 inches (243.8 × 182.9 cm)© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Project Row Houses: Biggers and Beuys, 2021

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 96 × 72 inches (243.8 × 182.9 cm)
© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey #2, 2020 Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 96 × 180 inches (243.8 × 457.2 cm)© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey #2, 2020

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 96 × 180 inches (243.8 × 457.2 cm)
© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2020 Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 72 × 60 inches (182.9 × 152.4 cm), Menil Collection, Houston© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2020

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 72 × 60 inches (182.9 × 152.4 cm), Menil Collection, Houston
© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2019 Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 72 × 60 inches (182.9 × 152.4 cm)© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2019

Acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 72 × 60 inches (182.9 × 152.4 cm)
© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2019 Acrylic and paint marker on paper, 52 ¼ × 42 ½ inches (132.7 × 108 cm)© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2019

Acrylic and paint marker on paper, 52 ¼ × 42 ½ inches (132.7 × 108 cm)
© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey, Chicago, 2018– Social sculptureInstallation view, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2021© Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Michael Tropea

Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey, Chicago, 2018–

Social sculpture
Installation view, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2021
© Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Michael Tropea

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2018 Ink and acrylic on printed paper, 35 ½ × 23 ¾ inches (90.2 × 60.3 cm)© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2018

Ink and acrylic on printed paper, 35 ½ × 23 ¾ inches (90.2 × 60.3 cm)
© Rick Lowe Studio

Rick Lowe, Project Row Houses, Houston, 1993–2018 Social sculpture conceived in collaboration with James Bettison, Bert Long, Jr., Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith

Rick Lowe, Project Row Houses, Houston, 1993–2018

Social sculpture conceived in collaboration with James Bettison, Bert Long, Jr., Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith

Rick Lowe, Victoria Square Project, Athens, 2016– Social sculpture conceived in collaboration with Maria Papadimitriou on the occasion of Documenta 14© Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Rick Lowe

Rick Lowe, Victoria Square Project, Athens, 2016–

Social sculpture conceived in collaboration with Maria Papadimitriou on the occasion of Documenta 14
© Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Rick Lowe

About

Rick Lowe’s extensive body of work in painting, drawing, and installation is paired with numerous collaborative projects, undertaken in the spirit and tradition of “social sculpture.” Working closely with individuals and communities, Lowe has identified myriad ways to exercise creativity in the context of everyday activities, harnessing it to explore concerns around equity and justice. Through such undertakings as Black Wall Street Journey (2018–), a multifaceted citywide project for which he installed an information ticker in a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, and Greenwood Art Project (2018–21), where he worked with local artists and others in Alabama to raise awareness of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Lowe has developed a highly flexible practice centered on nurturing relationships and catalyzing change.

Now based in Houston, Lowe was born in Russell County in rural Alabama. Among his earliest works are figurative “anti-paintings” derived from the aesthetics and functionality of protest signage. Engaging with issues such as police brutality, homelessness, poverty, and war, among others, these works were produced in collaboration with social justice groups and gatherings including community centers, protest rallies, and conferences.

This work led Lowe to explore further the constructs that underlie political and social systems. Influenced by Joseph Beuys’s concept of social sculpture, he became interested in developing projects aimed at the transformation of civic structures and sites. To this end, in 1993 he cofounded Project Row Houses in Houston’s Third Ward, a historically significant and culturally charged African American neighborhood. Conceived in collaboration with artists James Bettison (1958–1997), Bert Long, Jr. (1940–2013), Jesse Lott, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith—as well as with neighbors and other creative thinkers, Project Row Houses transformed a small area of derelict shotgun houses into a vibrant cultural district. To this day, the project continues to unite groups and pool resources, manifesting sustainable opportunities for artists, young mothers, small businesses, and local residents.

Lowe’s work in Houston inspired him to initiate and participate in other community enterprises throughout the United States and abroad, including the artist-driven redevelopment organization Watts House Project in Los Angeles (1996–2012); a collaboration with British architect David Adjaye on a project for the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park (2005); and the production of Trans.lation: Vickery Meadow, a group of six pop-up community markets, for the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (2013). Among his initiatives are the Victoria Square Project (2016–23), in the Victoria Square neighborhood of Athens, produced in collaboration with Maria Papadimitriou in the context of Documenta 14. By establishing spaces of cross-cultural dialogue, Lowe and Papadimitriou have helped make connections between immigrants, refugees, and locals possible in a community marked by xenophobic tensions following the onset of the refugee crisis in Greece.

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Detail of Lauren Halsey sculpture depicting praying hands, planets, and other symbol against red and green background

Black Futurity: Lessons in (Art) History to Forge a Path Forward

Jon Copes asks, What can Black History Month mean in the year 2024? He looks to a selection of scholars and artists for the answer.

Rick Lowe, Tom Finkelpearl, and Eugenie Tsai

In Conversation
Rick Lowe, Tom Finkelpearl, and Eugenie Tsai

Join Gagosian for a conversation between Rick Lowe and his longtime friends Tom Finkelpearl, author and former commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and Eugenie Tsai, senior curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, inside Lowe’s exhibition Meditations on Social Sculpture, at Gagosian, New York. The trio discusses their shared interest in transforming social structures and the evolution of Lowe’s new paintings from his ongoing community projects.

Still from "In Conversation: David Adjaye, Rick Lowe, and Thelma Golden"

In Conversation
David Adjaye, Rick Lowe, and Thelma Golden

Rick Lowe and Sir David Adjaye join Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, for a conversation on the occasion of the exhibition Social Works at Gagosian, New York. The trio explore Adjaye and Lowe’s shared interests in architecture, community building, and the relationship between space and the Black body.

Rick Lowe painting in his studio.

Behind the Art
Rick Lowe: In the Studio

Join Rick Lowe in his Houston studio as he speaks about his recent paintings, describing their connections to his long engagement with the activity of dominoes and to his community-based projects created in the tradition of social sculpture.

Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey Manifesto #1, 2021, acrylic and paper collage on paper, 141 × 115 inches (358.1 × 292.1 cm).

Social Works: Rick Lowe and Walter Hood

Rick Lowe and Walter Hood speak about Black space, the built environment, and history as a footing for moving forward as part of “Social Works,” a supplement guest edited by Antwaun Sargent for the Summer 2021 issue of the Quarterly.

Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006), on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2021

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2021

The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.

Fairs, Events & Announcements

Gagosian’s booth at Frieze Los Angeles 2024. Artwork, front to back: © Lauren Halsey, © Cy Gavin, © Theaster Gates. Photo: Ed Mumford

Art Fair

Frieze Los Angeles 2024
Social Abstraction

March 1–3, 2024, booth D13
Santa Monica Airport, California
frieze.com

Gagosian is pleased to announce its participation in Frieze Los Angeles 2024 with Social Abstraction, a diverse selection of paintings and sculptures rooted in the exploration of historic qualities of abstraction and contemporary social realities. The first in a sequence of three presentations organized by Antwaun Sargent, Social Abstraction at Frieze Los Angeles will be followed by exhibitions in Beverly Hills this summer and in Hong Kong this fall.

The intergenerational group of Black artists in Social AbstractionDerrick AdamsTheaster GatesCy GavinLauren Halsey, and Rick Loweoperates beyond purely formal concerns to create artworks that move between and beyond figuration and abstraction. They push shape to become landscape, color to reveal people, and texture to map the totality of experience.

Gagosian’s booth at Frieze Los Angeles 2024. Artwork, front to back: © Lauren Halsey, © Cy Gavin, © Theaster Gates. Photo: Ed Mumford

Still from “West to East: Mapping the Unknown: Rick Lowe”

Video

West to East
Mapping the Unknown: Rick Lowe

In episode two of the National Gallery of Art’s video series West to East, which launched in spring 2023, Rick Lowe guides the viewer through his home in the Third Ward neighborhood of Houston. West to East focuses on contemporary artists whose works actively explore connections to their distinct communities and the United States at large, looking in particular at those working outside well-known “art hubs.” Lowe has spent thirty years combining art and activism via his community platform, Project Row Houses, and more recently he has been creating paintings inspired by maps and dominoes, in a quest for aesthetic beauty. Lowe and his community partners work together to “map the unknown” future.

Still from “West to East: Mapping the Unknown: Rick Lowe”

Gagosian’s booth at ART SG 2024. Artwork, left to right: © ADAGP, Paris, 2024, © Jonas Wood, © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Ringo Cheung

Art Fair

ART SG 2024

January 19–21, 2024, booth BC06
Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore
artsg.com

Gagosian is pleased to participate in the second edition of ART SG, with a selection of works by international contemporary artists including Harold Ancart, Georg Baselitz, Ashley Bickerton, Amoako Boafo, Dan Colen, Edmund de Waal, Nan Goldin, Lauren Halsey, Hao Liang, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Tetsuya Ishida, Alex Israel, Donald Judd, Y.Z. Kami, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Rick Lowe, Takashi Murakami, Takashi Murakami & Virgil Abloh, Nam June Paik, Ed Ruscha, Jim Shaw, Alexandria Smith, Spencer Sweeney, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood, and Zeng Fanzhi. The works on view, which embrace a wide variety of subjects and approaches, find artists infusing traditional genres such as history painting, portraiture, and landscape with new and surprising ideas that traverse cultural and temporal boundaries. 

Gagosian’s booth at ART SG 2024. Artwork, left to right: © ADAGP, Paris, 2024, © Jonas Wood, © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Ringo Cheung

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Museum Exhibitions

Rick Lowe, Fire #4: This Time Athens, 2023, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © Rick Lowe Studio

Opening this Week

Revolutions
Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960

March 22, 2024–April 20, 2025
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
hirshhorn.si.edu

Revolutions is a major survey of 270 artworks by 126 artists from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s permanent collection. Celebrating the museum’s fiftieth anniversary, the exhibition aims to capture the shifting cultural landscapes of a century defined by new currents in science and philosophy and ever-increasing mechanization. Shown alongside these historic works are contributions from nineteen contemporary artists whose practices demonstrate how many revolutionary ideas from a hundred years ago remain critical today. Work by Francis Bacon, Amoako Boafo, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Helen FrankenthalerRick LoweSally Mann, Man Ray, Henry MoorePablo PicassoNathaniel Mary Quinn, and Cy Twombly is included.

Rick Lowe, Fire #4: This Time Athens, 2023, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © Rick Lowe Studio

Lauren Halsey, Loda Land, 2020 © Lauren Halsey

On View

Multiplicity
Blackness in Contemporary American Collage

Through May 12, 2024
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
www.mfah.org

Multiplicity presents over eighty major collage and collage-informed works by fifty-two living artists. The works reflect the breadth and complexity of Black identity, exploring diverse conceptual concerns such as cultural hybridity, notions of beauty, gender fluidity, and historical memory. From paper, photographs, fabric, and salvaged or repurposed materials, these artists create unified compositions that express the endless possibilities of Black-constructed narratives within our fragmented society. This exhibition originated at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee. Work by Derrick Adams, Lauren Halsey, and Rick Lowe is included.

Lauren Halsey, Loda Land, 2020 © Lauren Halsey

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2023 © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Thomas DuBrock

Opening Soon

Rick Lowe
The Arch within the Arc

April 17–November 24, 2024
Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice
polomusealeveneto.beniculturali.it

Inspired by the architecture of the Museo di Palazzo Grimani and the urban dynamics of Venice, The Arch within the Arc features new paintings by Rick Lowe that emerged from his consideration of the arch in architecture. Composed with acrylic paint and paper collage on canvas, the vibrant works balance geometric motifs and improvisational techniques. Radiating outward and turning in on themselves, Lowe’s images materialize via a process of painterly construction and deconstruction that evokes infrastructure, mapping, and the experience of moving through the city. The paintings meditate on spatial, temporal, and social relationships, in keeping with the artist’s interest in linking civic practice and visual expression. Presented in collaboration with Gagosian, the exhibition opens immediately prior to the commencement of the 60th Biennale di Venezia.

Rick Lowe, Untitled, 2023 © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Thomas DuBrock

Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey #2, 2020, installation view, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: John Schweikert

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Multiplicity
Blackness in Contemporary American Collage

September 15–December 31, 2023
Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee
fristartmuseum.org

Multiplicity presents over eighty major collage and collage-informed works by fifty-two living artists. The works reflect the breadth and complexity of Black identity, exploring diverse conceptual concerns such as cultural hybridity, notions of beauty, gender fluidity, and historical memory. From paper, photographs, fabric, and salvaged or repurposed materials, these artists create unified compositions that express the endless possibilities of Black-constructed narratives within our fragmented society. Work by Derrick Adams, Lauren Halsey, and Rick Lowe is included.

Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey #2, 2020, installation view, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: John Schweikert

See all Museum Exhibitions for Rick Lowe