BONN.- Kunstmuseum Bonn is the first German museum to show a solo exhibition of Laura Owens who was born in Euclid, Ohio (USA) in 1970 and lives in Los Angeles today. With Laura Owens, who already had several exhibitions at renowned museums like the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (2003), Kunsthalle Zürich (2006) and Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht (2007), Kunstmuseum Bonn presents, after Franz Ackermann, yet another important young position in contemporary painting.

Laura Owens undoubtedly takes a special position in the field of young contemporary painting, as her seemingly romantic and naïve pictorial language goes beyond the separation between abstract and figurative art. Only upon a closer look the analytical potential of her paintings dealing with the tradition of modernism becomes visible. Her paintings can be placed somewhere between vital colorism and symbolically charged figuration which at times reveals the absymal, at other times the dreamlike of existence. The almost childlike handwriting of the ornamentally charged paintings provokes the question about the limits of painting as art or as an element of everyday life.

In addition to numerous unique books made in 2011, the exhibition includes two comprehensive new series: One series, including several large-sized works, deals with the representational aspect of painting while the other series with smaller works questions the topic of time.

A catalog published by Kerber Verlag with essays by Stefan Gronert, Stephan Berg and Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer accompanies the exhibition.