Complex Identities
Opening Reception July 18th, 2020 4pm-6pm
Closing Reception August 22nd, 2020 4pm-6pm
Show runs from -
July 18th, 2020 - August 22nd, 2020
Video from Opening Reception
Artist - Johan Lowie
Statement
Experience describes what we do. The texture of experience describes how we feel. In Johan Lowie’s work, it is emotional texture above all that spurs expression.
Lowie’s decades of creative work evoke deep, unsettled feelings that come from the frisson of life experiences churning directly against interior wheels of emotion. His images present experience and observation transformed by contemplation. Where a superficial review of his work might determine it to be purely surreal, longer exposure suggests deeply emotional, honest explorations about how we remember our own feelings as we accumulate experience through life.
Take Lowie’s landscapes. He often paints the environment around his home in Fredrick County, Maryland, but almost never works from photographs. Rather than composing abstractions based on what he sees, Lowie instead explores a sense of emotional memory that the landscape evokes. What emerges become explorations not only of the emotional texture prompted by location, but also the emotional context for Lowie himself, as he inevitably invests his interior life into the externalized effort of his work.
Lowie explores diverse subjects in his work beyond landscapes, too. From carefully considered interior spaces to abstracted figure studies to moody street scenes, Lowie’s work returns repeatedly to the intangible, yet deeply emotive spaces that shape human feelings and memory.
In a theatrical sense, drama demands that contrasting elements be in direct contact. Lowie’s paintings present inherently dramatic themes, with bold colors and often primitive geometric shapes sometimes placed in context with more literal images, like a person sitting a chair or a simple piece of furniture. More often, however, color and shape describe their own vocabulary. Figurative evocations generally take a secondary role to purely emotional expressions. Where inspiration may arrive from challenging life experiences like loss, isolation, and pursuit of purpose in life, the tangible aspects of his work speak with strong colors, defined shapes, and confident juxtapositions.
Lowie’s work challenges viewers, but that challenge gives as much as it takes. Where viewers may first encounter assertive designs and compelling compositions, they soon find themselves forced to reckon with their own relationship to the images.
Lowie asks viewers not simply to consume his images, but to digest them, integrate them, and ask themselves why they feel the way they do. In an era saturated with invented, inventive images, that provocative moment of introspection may be the most elusive filter.
Lowie’s decades of creative work evoke deep, unsettled feelings that come from the frisson of life experiences churning directly against interior wheels of emotion. His images present experience and observation transformed by contemplation. Where a superficial review of his work might determine it to be purely surreal, longer exposure suggests deeply emotional, honest explorations about how we remember our own feelings as we accumulate experience through life.
Take Lowie’s landscapes. He often paints the environment around his home in Fredrick County, Maryland, but almost never works from photographs. Rather than composing abstractions based on what he sees, Lowie instead explores a sense of emotional memory that the landscape evokes. What emerges become explorations not only of the emotional texture prompted by location, but also the emotional context for Lowie himself, as he inevitably invests his interior life into the externalized effort of his work.
Lowie explores diverse subjects in his work beyond landscapes, too. From carefully considered interior spaces to abstracted figure studies to moody street scenes, Lowie’s work returns repeatedly to the intangible, yet deeply emotive spaces that shape human feelings and memory.
In a theatrical sense, drama demands that contrasting elements be in direct contact. Lowie’s paintings present inherently dramatic themes, with bold colors and often primitive geometric shapes sometimes placed in context with more literal images, like a person sitting a chair or a simple piece of furniture. More often, however, color and shape describe their own vocabulary. Figurative evocations generally take a secondary role to purely emotional expressions. Where inspiration may arrive from challenging life experiences like loss, isolation, and pursuit of purpose in life, the tangible aspects of his work speak with strong colors, defined shapes, and confident juxtapositions.
Lowie’s work challenges viewers, but that challenge gives as much as it takes. Where viewers may first encounter assertive designs and compelling compositions, they soon find themselves forced to reckon with their own relationship to the images.
Lowie asks viewers not simply to consume his images, but to digest them, integrate them, and ask themselves why they feel the way they do. In an era saturated with invented, inventive images, that provocative moment of introspection may be the most elusive filter.
Biography
Photo by John Nelson
Johan Lowie grew up in Ypres, Belgium and speaks English, French, Dutch--a polyglot of romantic influences. Lowie received a BFA in Plastic Arts (1979) from Kortryk Institute of Technology and an MFA in Painting (1983) from KASK, the Royal Academy of Arts in Ghent. Eight years working as a commercial artist, developing graphic designs for widely varied clients, both sharpened his technical skills while also distilling his passion and desire to pursue more personal expressions instead.
After visiting family who reside in the Northeastern U.S. and Canada, Johan Lowie moved to The Finger Lakes region of New York State in the Spring of 1994. A few years later he moved to Fredrick County, Maryland where he currently works as a full time artist since 2005 and from his studio in The Griffin Art Center since 2007.
Both personally and professionally, Lowie is the result of an artistic family. His father was a sculptor, his mother a singer. Even at an early age, Lowie knew he would ultimately find his way into the arts. His work travels between mediums and styles, but concentrates on Surrealism and Impressionism to express and excavate deeper understandings of what forces shape his feelings at different moments in time, or about specific subjects or experiences.
By invitation, Lowie’s paintings have been in museum exhibits and his work has also been in group and solo exhibits in galleries since 2007 primarily throughout Maryland, but also including Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, and Belgium. A video project of his entitled “String Theory” was selected for Soap Box projects as one of 60 one minute films for the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts. Carl Anderson directed an eleven minute documentary “The Line” focusing on Johan Lowie, his artwork, and his process which can be found on his website. Lowie’s paintings are sought after by collectors across the US and Europe.
After visiting family who reside in the Northeastern U.S. and Canada, Johan Lowie moved to The Finger Lakes region of New York State in the Spring of 1994. A few years later he moved to Fredrick County, Maryland where he currently works as a full time artist since 2005 and from his studio in The Griffin Art Center since 2007.
Both personally and professionally, Lowie is the result of an artistic family. His father was a sculptor, his mother a singer. Even at an early age, Lowie knew he would ultimately find his way into the arts. His work travels between mediums and styles, but concentrates on Surrealism and Impressionism to express and excavate deeper understandings of what forces shape his feelings at different moments in time, or about specific subjects or experiences.
By invitation, Lowie’s paintings have been in museum exhibits and his work has also been in group and solo exhibits in galleries since 2007 primarily throughout Maryland, but also including Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, and Belgium. A video project of his entitled “String Theory” was selected for Soap Box projects as one of 60 one minute films for the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts. Carl Anderson directed an eleven minute documentary “The Line” focusing on Johan Lowie, his artwork, and his process which can be found on his website. Lowie’s paintings are sought after by collectors across the US and Europe.
