Opens Thursday, March 13, 6-8 pm
Robin Lowe was born in 1959, the same year that On the Beach – a novel written by English-born Australian-dwelling writer Nevil Shute – was made into a film starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. On the Beach is a harrowing story of the imminent e... Read more
Opens Thursday, March 13, 6-8 pm
Robin Lowe was born in 1959, the same year that On the Beach – a novel written by English-born Australian-dwelling writer Nevil Shute – was made into a film starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. On the Beach is a harrowing story of the imminent extinction of all life following a doomsday barrage of atomic bombs in the Northern Hemisphere. It traces
the complex, contradictory behaviors of individuals on the south coast of Australia who must live what remains of their lives in full knowledge of the inevitable end of humanity as radioactive fallout gradually encircles the globe.
The paintings in our exhibition do not illustrate the story. Lowe distills from the novel’s narrative images that meditate upon the themes of belief and denial. The central characters of the novel are Dwight Towers, an American submarine captain stranded by the holocaust far from his doomed family, and Moira Davidson, a beautiful and reckless party girl who cannot help but yearn for the life she might have had. Lowe’s drifting
life rafts carrying a pogo stick and a fishing rod are symbols of the illusions they cling to in the face of the inconceivable yet undeniable truth, that his children are dead and she will not live to have her own.
The novel is curiously unencumbered by religion and its promise of redemption and the afterlife yet the image of the cross appears in several of Lowe’s paintings. It appears shield-like on surfboards and is implied in the tower structure breaking the surface atop the submarine. Lowe portrays Mary, a young wife and mother anchored by the everyday needs of her child, as an angel in a lifeboat becalmed in still water.
These naturalistic yet stylized paintings are filled with the hazy radiance of the beach, the place where land meets water and sky. It is the locale of the final scene in which Moira dies watching Dwight’s submarine vanish on the horizon and becomes Lowe’s emblem for what remains.
This is Robin Lowe’s first exhibition at Lennon, Weinberg and his first in New York since he showed his Erewhon paintings at Bonakdar in 2000. He has exhibited in Los Angeles, London and Amsterdam.
