Margo Wolowiec

About

Laura Bartlett Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by American artist Margo Wolowiec. This will be the artist's first show with the gallery.  Wolowiec will present an entire new body of work which expands upon her distinct woven practice with freestanding sculptures and a video work.

Margo Wolowiec’s canvasses begin life as digital files in a vault of found images sourced from social media sites. The New York based artist then uses weaving techniques to catch the image, to render its materiality and dislocate it from the impermanence that characterizes the digital. Although Wolowiec’s critique of contemporary image culture is articulated through techniques that appear antiquated in comparison, the juxtaposition resuscitates marginalised histories that hold a cracked mirror to contemporary society. Recent work that draws on Navajo rug makers and the women weavers of the Bauhaus are prime examples of the sources Wolowiec uses to address the friction between what is embedded and forgotten. By taking such an unusual path to address the contemporary condition of the image Wolowiec has acquired a distinctive voice among a generation of artists trying to make legible the impact of the internet on visual culture.

Margo Wolowiec (b. 1985, Detroit) lives and works in New York. She recieved her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2013. Recent exhibitions include solo presentations at Johansson Projects in Oakland, CA and Anat Egbi, LA (both 2014). Wolowiec has lectured at Maryland Institute College of the Arts, Baltimore, MD, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, and was a visiting critic at the Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY.