Laura Owens

Owens was born in 1970 in Euclid, Ohio and raised in nearby Norwalk, Ohio.[4] She received her B.F.A. in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992.[5] After graduation she moved to Los Angeles for graduate school. In 1994 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received her M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts the same year.[6][7]

In 2015, Owens made paintings based on World War II-era newspaper stereotype plates she discovered underneath the shingle siding of her Los Angeles home.[8] Like much of her recent work, the paintings combined traditional oil paint with screen printed images digitally manipulated in Adobe Photoshop.

In addition to painting, Owens also creates artists' books.[9] As of 2016, she teaches classes at ArtCenter College of Design.[10]

Owen's work can be found in many public art collections including, the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago;[11] the Museum of Modern Art, New York;[12] the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles;[13] the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles;[14] the Guggenheim Museum in New York, New York;[15] the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;[16] the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Chicago;[17] and the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee.[18]

Owens' paintings at a 2013 exhibit at 356 Mission

In January 2013, Owens exhibited 12 new paintings in a building at 356 Mission Road, across the river from Downtown Los Angeles.[19] Owens continued to run this space, 356 Mission as an exhibition space in collaboration with Gavin Brown and Wendy Yao.[20][21] In May 2018, 356 Mission closed after their 5 year lease came to an end.[22] The bookstore Ooga Booga remains open at its original store location in Chinatown, Los Angeles.[10]

Laura Owens and Gavin Brown have been accused of being involved with gentrification of a predominantly working-class, Hispanic neighborhood with their non-profit gallery 356 Mission in the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, on the east side of Los Angeles.[23] Activists of various anti-gentrification groups have protested their galleries and exhibitions in both Los Angeles and New York City.[24] Owens alleges protesters have bullied and threatened her, including death threats.[23] In November 2017, she penned a public statement regarding the issues, after her mid-career survey art exhibition opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art was protested.[25] The 356 Mission art space closed in 2019, due to the lease ending.[3]

Owens was awarded the inaugural Bâloise Prize at Art Basel in 1999,[26] received the Willard L. Metcalf Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001,[27][28] and was a Guna S. Mundheim Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in the spring of 2007.[29] In 2015, she was awarded the Robert De Niro, Sr. prize for her painting practice.[30]

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