The Spring 2024 Graduate Art guest lecture series, organized by Jack Bankowsky

Laura Owens and Albert Oehlen on Vincent Van Gogh

This event is free & open to the public. RSVP’s are not required.

See the full Spring 2024 Seminar schedule here.

Laura Owens (b. 1970) is a Los Angeles-based painter. Her experimental, often large-scale works, deploy a variety of materials, techniques and imagery ranging from the avant-garde to the vernacular, continually pushing the boundaries of what painting is, or can be. Pulling from her visual lexicon of drawings, patterns, and ephemera, a number of her recent exhibitions take the form of site-specific immersive paintings on wallpaper. They include a 2021 exhibition at Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles, France, a floor-to-ceiling creation inspired by, and exhibited alongside, paintings by Van Gogh; and a solo exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH. In 2020, Owens unveiled a monumental mosaic-tile mural at LaGuardia Airport, New York, NY, and the year before, she created a show of handmade artist's books on interactive tables for the Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, as well as a large-scale painting for the ceiling of Sant' Andrea de Scaphis, a deconsecrated church in Rome, Italy. In 2017, she was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, which traveled to the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, and The Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, the following year. She has previously had solo exhibitions at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2016); Secession, Vienna (2015); and Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany (2011).

Albert Oehlen (b. 1954) has been a key figure in contemporary art since the 1980s. Attending the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, where he studied under Sigmar Polke, he quickly came to be associated with the Junge Wilde artists and "bad" painting movement. Bringing together abstract, figurative, collaged and computer-generated elements, Oehlen deploys Expressionist brushwork, Surrealist gestures, and deliberate amateurism, to engage with the history of painting, pushing the medium in bold new directions.

Oehlen has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held in institutions including: Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy (2018); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2016); Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain (2016); New Museum, New York, NY (2015); Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy (2009); and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France (2009). Oehlen exhibits regularly at Gagosian and Galerie Max Hetzler. Oehlen currently lives and works in Bühlen, Switzerland.

Image credits: Photograph of Albert Oehlen courtesy of Artist. Photograph of Laura Owens by Noah Webb.

The Graduate Art Seminar is a forum for graduate students and members of the ArtCenter community to enter into dialog with internationally recognized artists, critics, and art historians. The Seminar is a core component of ArtCenter's Graduate Art program. The Seminar is also free and open to the public.

ArtCenter's Graduate Art program is based on intensive studio practice and rigorous academic coursework. The program is distinguished by its low faculty-to-student ratio, which provides students with the attention and feedback they need to refine and achieve their artistic goals. Faculty and students are artists working in all genres of film, video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and installation. A significant number of alumni have achieved national and international acclaim and often return to share their insights and expertise as visiting faculty and guest lecturers.