Artwork
Untitled
Untitled is an oil painting by the Contemporary Abstract artist Laura Owens. It dates from 2013 and is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
About this work
Overview
Her work emerged from the Los Angeles art community in the late 1990s and continues to challenge conventional boundaries between image, text, and gesture.
Created in 2013, this untitled painting by Laura Owens combines acrylic, Flashe, and oil stick on canvas, reflecting her engagement with material experimentation in contemporary abstraction. The work is held in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art and exemplifies Owens’ approach to painting as a layered, process-driven practice. Her work emerged from the Los Angeles art community in the late 1990s and continues to challenge conventional boundaries between image, text, and gesture.
Subject & Meaning
The painting evokes the visual density of fragmented printed matter, resembling torn newspaper clippings or collaged text, but is entirely constructed from paint. Bold black forms suggest letters or abstracted faces, while flashes of red and green introduce directional cues or interruptions. The work resists fixed interpretation, instead inviting viewers to navigate its visual noise as a meditation on information overload and the instability of meaning in mediated culture.
Technique & Style
Owens employed a range of tools, including brushes, sticks, and scrapers, to build thick, textured surfaces with impasto and scraped passages. The interplay of opaque, matte Flashe and glossy acrylic creates visual contrast, while oil stick adds sharp, linear emphasis. Overlapping layers produce a sense of depth and erasure, where marks appear both deliberate and spontaneous. The result is a surface that balances chaos with compositional control.
History & Provenance
Painted in 2013, the same year Owens co-founded the 356 Mission gallery in Los Angeles, this work emerged during a period of expanded institutional recognition. It entered The Museum of Modern Art’s collection shortly after its creation, signaling its significance within contemporary painting discourse. The work reflects Owens’ dual role as artist and cultural organizer, bridging studio practice and community-based exhibition spaces.
Context
This piece aligns with broader trends in 2010s abstraction that re-examined the legacy of collage, Dada, and postmodern text-based art. Owens’ use of printed imagery as a visual reference, without direct reproduction, responds to the saturation of digital and print media. Her work engages with the tension between analog materiality and the ephemeral nature of digital communication, situating painting within contemporary information culture.
Legacy
Owens’ approach to painting as a hybrid, multi-layered practice has influenced a generation of artists exploring materiality and textual ambiguity. Her integration of gallery curation with studio work expanded the model of the artist as institutional participant. This painting remains a touchstone for discussions on how painting can absorb and reconfigure the visual language of mass media without succumbing to its logic.
Artist & collection
Artist
Laura Owens (born 1970) is an American painter, gallery owner and educator. She emerged in the late 1990s from the Los Angeles art scene. She is known for large-scale paintings that combine a variety of art historical…
