Liza Lou

Lou uses geometric structures in many of the pieces in the exhibition in order to reveal the humanity underlying repetitive labor, resulting in works whose imperfections display ineffable beauty and human tenderness. One work, for example, titled horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss trickling*, consists of a grid of beaded white squares which Lou pieced together with 24 karat gold beads to make a single sheet and then stretched like canvas. Imperfections become apparent in the making—the squares become rectangular, surfaces become dirty and misshapen; holes and pockmarks appear.