FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kristi Engle Gallery
5002 York Ave.
Highland Park, CA 90042
323.472.6237
kristi@kristienglegallery.com

The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour is a blanket knitted from magnetic audio tape, a recording of a reading of the New Testament. In this example of what Lowry calls an "object-based poem", language is made physical while its meaning is entirely obscured. The material is transformed in such a way that the uses of both audio tape and blanket are undermined. For ceasefire, Lowry has embroidered The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on a white bed sheet with white thread, in braille. These shifts between media not only serve to destabilize communication, the value of the treaty itself, as an utterance is what is lost in transition.

These labor-intensive activities- fabricating useful objects the hard way- combines the notion of use-value with human activity so that the object is in fact used, like language, as a container for meaning. Lowry's 'sweaters' knitted from rope (knot) and steel chain (motherlove) are meaningfully rendered useless. Similarly for “dreamweave”, a woven videotape blanket of Disney's “Cinderella” with Columbia Studio's “Atom Man vs. Superman”, Lowry thickens the medium, making communication into an object: opaque, mute and yet full of meaning. This visual poetry exemplifies how the transition from information to communication, and from communication to meaning are fraught with complexities that are oftentimes obscured from view. Lowry's work draws attention to this condition of language, and objects in general, so that we may feel its presence, its weight, its warp and weft.

Kristi Engle Gallery devotes itself primarily to solo exhibitions of new works by contemporary artists. It is located in Highland Park, near the corner of Ave. 50 and York Blvd.