Coming soon to the Brooklyn Museum: Liza Lou's Trailer
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Monday, October 7, 2024


Coming soon to the Brooklyn Museum: Liza Lou's Trailer
Liza Lou (American, born 1969). Trailer, 1998–2000. Glass beads, aluminum, textile, wood, metal wire, plaster, rubber, found objects, electrical parts, and video (color, sound, looped), 120 × 96 × 420 in. (304.8 × 243.8 × 1066.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Sherry and Joel Mallin, 2022.24. © Liza Lou (Photo: Tom Powel Imaging)



BROOKLYN, NY.- On the occasion of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th anniversary, visitors will encounter an exciting new artwork in the Museum’s lobby. Trailer (1998–2000), the first work by contemporary American artist Liza Lou to enter the Museum’s collection, is a large-scale, immersive sculpture contained inside a thirty-five-foot-long 1949 Spartan Royal Mansion mobile trailer. The work explores themes of masculinity, despair, isolation, and violence with a cinematic flair and is on view for the first time in over a decade.

The interior of Trailer is completely covered in glass beads, its controlled color palette evoking the stylized aesthetics of Hollywood film noir crime dramas. Combining everyday objects of mobile-home living with traces of masculine-coded interior life, the scene suggests a sinister and mysterious narrative. From magazine covers to hunting gear, an oven range and comfortable couch to a flickering TV, whiskey bottles, crushed cigarette cartons, and more, everything is rendered in beads. A poised typewriter sits next to a camera and a handwritten letter reads “KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD TO LIBERTY,” an obscure nod to the unsolved 1937 assassination attempt on Los Angeles District Attorney Buron Fitts. These elements coalesce into a foreboding portrait of a man just out of sight—or is he? Trailer demands close looking—of both its detailed intricacy and its series of allusions, asking questions about what is revealed and what is hidden from view. Like individual pixels, the glass beads dazzle and coalesce into shapes and patterns, forming a sinister spectacle that examines obsession.

Trailer was the third major artwork that Liza Lou created in a series of works exploring idealized suburban America, following Backyard (1996–99) and her iconic work Kitchen (1991–96), a thrumming Technicolor transformation of a kitchen infused with feminist humor and critiques of commercialism, now in the Whitney Museum collection. Both works evoke experiences of passion and obsession as the laborious process of assembling and placing beads speaks to marshaling time itself as part of the process—and as a material for art and life.

A recent gift of Sherry and Joel Mallin, Trailer joins a lively array of artwork installed in the museum’s welcoming lobby space. Visitors can step onto the viewing platform and explore the work’s lurid world from within. To expand access for all visitors, particularly those with mobility aids, a digital interactive kiosk will feature a panoramic image and three-dimensional scans showcasing both the interior and individual objects up close. Visitors can also enjoy an interview with the artist and take a close look at the extensive treatment done by museum conservators in an exclusive Brooklyn Museum–produced video. On Thursday November 21, Liza Lou will speak as part of a Brooklyn Talk focused on collection artists. Concurrent with Trailer’s debut in Brooklyn, Liza Lou’s exhibition of new work exploring the gestural and microscopic forms of Abstract Expressionist painting—rendered in an array of colorful glass beads—is on view in her solo exhibition Painting at Lehmann Maupin Gallery through October 12, 2024. This offers a rare opportunity to experience the artist’s newest work and one of her earliest and rarely-seen sculptures in the same city.

Liza Lou: Trailer is organized by Carmen Hermo, former Associate Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.










Today's News

September 6, 2024

At 30, The Armory Show asks, can art fairs still be relevant?

Mister ArtSee relaunches at Pioneer Works on September 8th

Woody Auction announces highlights included in its Art Glass, Lamps & Much More auction

Hirshhorn Museum appoints José Roca as Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator at Large of Latin American and Latin Diasporic Art

Remarkable gift for Escher in The Palace: Two unknown M.C. Escher drawings

How dinosaurs rocked Victorian society

Tate showcases major works of art from the D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift

City of London Corporation and the Mayor of London pledge additional £50 million towards new London Museum

Morgan Lehman Gallery opens Edra Soto's solo exhibition por la señal / by a signal

Haus der Kunst opens Pussy Riot's largest presentation to date

Luca Guadagnino gets crafty

Tang dynasty terracotta, cloisonné, original paintings and jade lead Heritage's Asian Art event

Coming soon to the Brooklyn Museum: Liza Lou's Trailer

Exhibition explores Chinese art featuring demonic creatures as entities that either bring harm or ward off evil spirits

NGV Architecture Commission winner announced

The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County presents 'Mark Dion: Excavations'

New donations to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History

David Zwirner now representing Sasha Gordon

Keeping the spirit of Harlem dance alive

The Approach opens a solo exhibition by John Stezaker

Daniel Dae Kim isn't afraid to fail

Mk.gee, an unlikely guitar god, chases the promise of pop

Long-lost sculptures Carel Visser acquired for Rijksmuseum gardens

4 Tips for Taking the Perfect Headshots for Employee IDs

Master English Writing with These Top Grammar Checkers

Qiurui Du: Decoding the Pop Key to Urban Landscape Society




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful