LOWELL RYAN PROJECTS
Born to Love
Alexandra Grant
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 1, 2019, 7-9pm
June 1 – July 6, 2019
Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present Born to Love, a solo exhibition by Alexandra Grant. The title for the show stems from Sophocles’ play Antigone. In the ancient Greek tragedy, Antigone is brought before King Creon for disobeying his mandate against mourning the death of her brother, Polynices, who the King has labelled a traitor to the state. “An enemy is an enemy, even dead,” Creon says, to which Antigone replies, “I was born to love not to hate.” A blend of abstraction and text, Born to Love stands as an exploration of that radical stance—a stance that
goes beyond it’s personal agenda to take on much greater social and universal implications.
The show will feature seven large-scale works on paper and two oil paintings on canvas from the Los Angeles-based artist’s Antigone 3000 series. These works simultaneously contrast and incorporate various forms of abstraction––geometric, gestural, color-field––with sepulchral wax rubbings of text. Through Grant’s painterly nods to abstraction, the works achieve their harmony by juxtaposing visual language with textual quotation, repeating the phrase “I was born to love not to hate” throughout the works. Born to Love stands as a visual proposition that Antigone, in choosing love over hate, rises above all opposition with her steadfast conviction.
Alexandra Grant is a Los Angeles-based artist who through an exploration of the use of text and language in various media—painting, drawing, sculpture, film, and photography—probes ideas of translation, identity, dis/location, and social responsibility. Grant frequently collaborates with other artists, writers and philosophers, often going so far as to have specific texts written as the impetus to her intricate paintings and sculptures. She has collaborated with author Michael Joyce, actor Keanu Reeves, artist Channing Hansen, and the philosopher Hélène Cixous, amongst others.
RSVP to lowellryanprojects@seehearspeak.agency
