Lennon, Weinberg is pleased to present the first exhibition of Roy Dowell
in New York in a decade. The show will include twenty-one new collages,
all but three an identically scaled 16 x 11-1/2 inches.
For more than thirty years, Dowell has combined a precise painting
technique with elements ... Read more
Lennon, Weinberg is pleased to present the first exhibition of Roy Dowell
in New York in a decade. The show will include twenty-one new collages,
all but three an identically scaled 16 × 11-1/2 inches.
For more than thirty years, Dowell has combined a precise painting
technique with elements from printed materials. In his new collages, he
has chosen to depart from his traditional reliance on ready-made
materials, such as scraps from billboard ads or commercial signage, in
favor of painting or drawing most of the assembled components. Where
Dowell’s collages previously related to one another through the use of
shared printed elements, each of these new collages has a decidedly more
individualistic approach toward exposing and reframing the fabric of his
visual language.
The practice of collage is deeply rooted in the history of modernism, but
also represents a very contemporary response to the cacophony of image
and information that surround us. Artists “collage” entire room-sized
installations or videos as a way of embedding multiple meanings and
references into their work. In regard to his relationship to European
modernism and mid-century abstraction, Dowell offers: “Certainly there
are those things, but it also comes from an interest in ethnographic art,
from my interests in Mexico, Latin America, Africa… I’m not interested
in the symbology, but the aesthetics of it. I’m not using them for their
meaning. I am aware that it is there, but it comes along for the ride.”
Roy Dowell has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally.
His work is included in many museum collections such as the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in
Los Angeles. Four collages from Dowell’s current series were recently
acquired by the Hammer Museum. He shows regularly with Margo
Leavin Gallery and was previously represented in New York by Curt
Marcus Gallery and Fawbush Gallery. He is the founder and chair of the
Graduate Fine Arts Department at Otis College of Art and Design in Los
Angeles.
