“The long-term goal of the work that I do, whether it’s in Houston or any of the other projects that I’ve worked on, is to try to empower people in their communities, or whatever social context that they’re in, that they too are creative… and can exercise their power as creative practitioners within their own neighbourhoods.”
—Rick Lowe 

American artist Rick Lowe’s multidisciplinary and intersectional approach to art making strikes at the very heart of US social, political and economic issues. Growing up in Alabama and now residing in Houston, Texas, Lowe studied at Columbus State University and Texas Southern State University, before completing fellowships at Harvard Graduate School of Design and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his education he came across the idea of ‘social sculptures’ – a theory founded by Joseph Beuys that values everything and everyone as art and artist.

 

From this inspiration, Lowe targets ‘local sources of cultural and financial capital to help communities imagine new possibilities for themselves’, and along with fellow Houston-based artists and creatives he created Project Row Houses in 1993 – a redeveloped row of shotgun houses in Houston’s Third Ward, an area famous for its strong African American history and culture.ⁱ The Project Row Houses became a thriving cultural hub in the city, providing access for new artists to create and show their work with like-minded people. Lowe is one of the most important voices in the development of African American contemporary art, and his works are held in esteemed collections such as Tate Modern, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.  

           

Since Project Row Houses, Lowe has started several other initiatives, all aiming to aide the African American community, and raise awareness of the systemic and racial oppression that persists still today, particularly in the American South. One of these is the Black Wall Street Journey project, which aims to promote Chicago, Illinois, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a thriving centre of Black creativity, community, and prosperity. The present work is a physical manifestation of this ideology, one that harks back to Lowe’s roots in Houston.

 

“One of the things in the community here in Houston, I’ve found [is] that people play dominos. So, I started playing dominos a lot. And as I played, I was equally fascinated with the patterns of the domino games as they play out. I initially started just photographing them. […] Then, eventually, I had this challenge to make a drawing and I intuitively decided to make some tracings of these domino patterns that I see. The first drawing was just two games that I traced out on a piece of paper and then, after that it just kind of grew [into] multi-layered drawings… and it just evolved from there.”
—Rick Lowe

 Like a board of scattered dominoes, Lowe has manipulated fake $100 bills to create the impression of a vascular system; scattered infrastructure, winding roads, highlighting the connected and unconnected and converging in a swarm of crushed dollars that erupt from the surface of the canvas in mountainous peaks. Whilst initially inspired by his games of dominoes, Lowe soon made a spatial connection with the sprawling network of roads that lead to the central hub of Houston: ‘I found that fascinating because, doing the work I was doing with “Project Row houses” and other communities, a lot of it is about looking at the lay of the land and looking at maps’.ⁱⁱ In a powerful metaphor, money becomes the literal foundation of this pictorial space, another way of highlighting the economic difficulties felt by marginalised Black communities.

 

Lowe’s use of paper – in this example money, but sometimes newspaper clippings or photographs – is evocative of the intricate linear arrangements of the large-scale abstract works created by fellow American artist Mark Bradford. Furthermore, Lowe builds upon the work of Andy Warhol in his use of the iconic image of the dollar bill as a motif within his work. For Warhol, this was to highlight the boom of consumer capitalism that began during the 1960s, whereas for Lowe, this serves to highlight the economic disparity of African American communities. Black Wall Street Journey #11 serves as a poignant form reminder of the hardships felt by people like Lowe and the communities he strives to help. His social sculptures have had tangible results, and are building a new generation of Black artists, as well as creating vibrant social hubs of creative dynamism that are beginning to create economic prosperity.

 

 Rick Lowe: In the Studio | Artist Spotlight | Gagosian

 

 

 

Collector’s Digest

• American artist Rick Lowe’s multidisciplinary and intersectional approach to art making strikes at the very heart of US social, political and economic issues. He uses Joseph Beuy’s theory of social sculptures to create communities that foster African American creativity and prosperity.

• As well as his Project Row Houses, Lowe has started a variety of projects, and the present work comes from his Black Wall Street initiative, aimed at promoting Chicago, Illinois and Tulsa, Oklahoma as hubs of Black culture and wealth.

• Represented by blue-chip giant Gagosian, Lowe’s works are held in esteemed collections such as Tate Modern, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

 

 

ⁱ About Page, Black Wall Street Journey, online.

ⁱⁱ Rick Lowe, quoted in Pearl Fontaine, ‘Rick Lowe Reflects on Decades of Social Sculpture at Gagosian’, whitewall, 7 September, 2022, online.