I was flipping through a copy of W magazine and came across a great interview with Liza Lou.
Read


Cell |
2004-2006
Wood, fibregalss and glass beads
97" x 68" x 96"


Security Fence I
2005
Steel, razor wire and glass beads
132 x 156 x 156 in. (335.3 x 396.2 x 396.2 cm)


Stairway to Heaven
2005
Resin, steel, fibreglass and glass beads,
Bucket: 14 1/2" x diameter. 13 1/2", Rope: 56" x 7"


Liza Lou

Combining visionary, conceptual and craft approaches, Liza Lou makes mixed-media sculptures and room-size installations that have an otherworldly power.

Lou often starts with the familiar forms of domestic spaces – a kitchen, for example, or the interior of a mobile caravan – that she constructed from a variety of materials, such as steel, wood, papier-mâché and fibreglass. These forms are then covered with tiny glass beads, painstakingly applied, one at a time, with a pair of tweezers. The resultant sculptures have an immediate visceral punch, and sheer aesthetic impact of the work is contrasted with the creeping realisation of the intensely labour-intensive process behind their construction. Dazzling and opulent, her beaded sculptures and installations bristle with a surreal excrescence that is sometimes at odds with the seriousness of her subject matter and themes. Lou’s recent work has tackled the vulnerability of the human body through sculptures that allude to the architecture of confinement. Cell (2004-06), for instance, plays with the idea of a jail cell, while Security Fence (2005) examines a chain-link fence enclosure. These politically sensitive works are, like Lou’s earlier full-scale installations Kitchen (1991-1995) or Back Yard (1995-1999), characterised by the absence of a human subject. For Cell and Security Fence, Lou slowed her method even further by using beads of the smallest variety, with all their holes placed face-upwards, an excruciatingly time-consuming process that allowed her to “use time as material”. In Lou’s sculptures of the human figure, such as The Seer (2005-2006) or Homeostasis (2005-2006), the systems of veins and arteries exposed on the surface of the sculpture, portraying the human body as delicate and fleshy, but also a system of knowledge. (White Cube)