Elana Bowsher
824 S Los Angeles Street, Ste. 509, Los Angeles, CA 90014
Friday, November 16 at 7:00 PM 9:00 PM
Ends Jan 6, 2019
OOF Books is pleased to present an exhibition of work by artist Elana Bowsher. Bowsher brings a triumphantly irreverent approach to ceramic mastery--utilizing her impeccably executed forms to contextualize imagery that is defiantly eclectic, allusive, and whimsical. Basing her vessels on ceramic forms favored by Picasso--often used in their origin to reference the female body--Bowsher roots her work in this recognizable configuration as a means to reclaim and query what it is to be female at this particular point in time. The resounding answer that Bowsher provides is a free-flowing and beautiful multiplicity. The bodily forms take on a variety of shapes and iterations, just as their cladding can be moody or light; laden with art reference or focused on fairy tales. Borrowing tropes from mythology, pop culture, art history, and the collective unconscious, the resulting work is somewhere between self portraiture, a reflection of the culture at large, and a fictional narrative. Bowsher's previous bodies of work have explored both the ceramic medium and autobiographical subject matter: sculpting beauty products or cacti out of clay. Returning to the form of the vessel nods to ceramic's craft lineage, while the figurative painting that the artist's vessels bare situate them at the intersection of object, sculpture, and painting in a way that feels very current. In subject matter and media, Bowsher provides contemporary painting with its ceramic parallel as is a Los Angeles tradition set forth by the Ferus Gallery. Elana Bowsher (b. 1990, San Francisco, CA) is a Los Angeles-based artist. She holds a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has exhibited work at Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Cermica Suro, Jalisco, Mexico; and Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles among others.