past (but still here online):

Owen Fu

6 self-portraits and one lamp

Presented on Gallery Platform Los Angeles

August 20th - 26th, 2020

OK. So just to be clear: I find it rather difficult to talk about Owen’s paintings. Since my first encounter with Owen and his work I certainly feel a lot of things about them, but am hard-pressed to put words to them.

However, I do keep returning to this word ______ (it’s just a word) as it may be the most honest ‘access’ I can offer to this man and his work. 

______ is not ‘quirky’, however, quirky might allude to a certain naiveté or at least a willful misunderstanding of an equally-elusive status quo, I might even argue that an almost inadvertent refusal to 'play by the rules’ is more the story we are searching for here.

______ is less about a quirky friction with the expected - but much more an exploration of something entirely unfamiliar. This unique brand of ______ is not novelty. This ______ is more like a light-bulb suddenly turning on…

Uncomfortable yet? Great!

So, I suppose I am desperately attempting to propose the word ______  as a substitute that could encompass or at least synthesize a whole gamut of things I’m struggling to find adequate language for.

But… indulge me just a moment longer… I think the inadequacies of language (of words) here pave the way for an entirely different point of access to Owen’s practice. His paintings are ______, yes, but isn’t that the idea? Isn’t it completely exciting to encounter something we don’t know how to talk about? Yet? 

I find artists are increasingly well-equipped to communicate incredible insights about their own work. And while the responsibility to transpose these insights into a soup of words to indicate relevance may eventually default to the curator, dealer or critic, maybe, just maybe, the absence of such tried-and-true, ribbon-tied rhetoric is what leaves us open (vulnerable) to a different kind of encounter.

However: language is important, and even Owen himself often contributes to this simmering stock of words with short poems or haikus or short pieces of text that offer a sort of diffuse insight to the “based on a true story” mythology already swimming around these paintings.

So what are we left with to talk about? Having attempted to establish that the inability to talk about something could possibly be the very thing that draws us in - where do we go from here?

We are left with the paintings. Here we are left with seven ______ paintings. We are left with the joy with which they were made. We are left with what is a nearly seamless dissolution of any boundaries separating confessional autobiography from indulgent fantasy. We are left with paint, linen, canvas… and ourselves, looking at these things… thinking: WTF? Why am I drawn to this exactly? 

There is something both congenially casual and startlingly serious with Owen’s work. They are laced with jovial irony and humor as much as they embody a challenge to find (or forge) new ways of standing in front of (and existing with) a painting (and the person who painted it, for that matter). 

The teapot may be smiling at you with a knowing, sinister grin and the ‘nose’ may also be a breast and/or a face or something else familiar yet not entirely identifiable. The lamps have been given faces with indistinguishable, haunting expressions and like treasure maps, painted power-cords may snake through a maze of genitals and furniture as conduits for decidedly psycho-sexual charges.

Invoking the word ______ is not a judgement, but rather a naked admission: I am out of my depth. Owen’s paintings are enchanting - but I couldn’t tell you why. Not exactly. His mind (and his work) - simultaneously sharp as hell and warped as fuck - is an inspiration and a challenge.

The stories are captivating and boundless with flagrant disregard for beginnings or ends. Someday we might be capable of putting words to what exactly is so ______ about them. And I believe we will then identify that moment when the experience of ______ became transformative as something that Owen’s work helped us see.

Courtesy of the artist and O-Town House. Text from Scott Cameron Weaver. Photography by Yusuke Ito.

672 S Lafayette Park Place, Suite 44, Los Angeles, CA 90057