Press Release: Constance Lowe

02.15.98

THE INTERNATIONAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM

New Works: 98.1

Tadashi Kawamata, TOKYO, JAPAN

Glenn Ligon, BROOKLYN, NY

Constance Lowe, SAN ANTONIO, TX

Exhibition: March 12, 1998 pril 12, 1998

The International Artist-in-Residence Program, sponsored by ArtPace, A Foundation
for Contemporary Art | San Antonio presents New Works: 98.1, a series of
installations by artists living and working at ArtPace. Tadashi Kawamata, Glenn Ligon
and Constance Lowe were selected by the March 1996 IAIR Program Panel consisting of
Elizabeth Armstrong, David Avalos, Dana Friis-Hansen, Thelma Golden and Maaretta
Jaukkuri. Work produced by the artists during their eight-week residency will open to the
public on Thursday, March 12, 1998.

Constance Lowe

San Antonio-based Constance Lowe was born in 1951 in St. Louis, MO and holds a
B.F.A. from the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX and an M.F.A. from Western
Michigan University. Lowe is an Associate Professor in the Division of Visual Art at the
University of Texas at San Antonio. Lowe has exhibited her work throughout the U.S.
since the early 1980s, including one-person exhibitions at the Forum for Contemporary
Art, St. Louis MO; I Space Gallery, Chicago; Thomas Barry Fine Arts, Minneapolis,
MN; and Rrose Amarillo, San Antonio, TX; Her work has been included in group shows
at Alfred University, Alfred, NY; Dallas Visual Art Center; Contemporary Art Center of
Fort Worth; Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio; the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio;
the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis,
MN.

Lowe's work has investigated themes of domesticity, science, and social structures,
presenting strategic contradictions?ricated objects that appear to be functional,
objects that attract with sensuous materials or forms, yet disturb with an institutional
sense of banality. Rigorously conceptual, yet accessible for their surrealistic or
"morphed" qualities, the works come across as emotive, live beings, charged with
information, emotional references, and visceral associations.

At ArtPace, Lowe has installed a group of sculptural objects in an installation titled
striking likeness. The gallery has been painted a cool blue, evoking an artificial
sense of winter. The backdrop of the installation is a theatrical painting, mural sized, a
painterly enlargement of a 1961 news photographs depicting an ice-coated, fire-damaged
hotel. Exquisitely cast butterflies, monochromatic in aluminum gray, are suspended in
flight or feeding from pools of acid yellow puddles. Lowe has placed large pearlescent
orbs on the floor and hanging in space?ms that could be an artificial iceberg, a
mutant tumor, a lethal exotic cyber-fungus. Fabricated shelves, some precisely lined with
calfskin, support shaving mirrors that have been rendered non-functional by talcum
powder and candle soot. A flamboyant yet somber red raincoat hangs discretely in a
corner of the room, interjecting a splash of bold color in the room of more subtle tomes.
Evoking the work of Merit Oppenhiemer, the assemblage of these familiar, yet
completely odd objects and forms anticipates the contradictory sense of discomfort
combined with a heightened curiosity.

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org