Red Panties with Black Hearts, 1995
mixed media
8.5 x 11 x 1.5 in

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Statement about Lou’s work provided by White Cube Gallery, London.

Combining visionary, conceptual and craft approaches, Liza Lou makes mixed-media sculptures and room-size installations that have an otherworldly power.

Lou often starts with the familiar forms of domestic spaces – a kitchen, for example, or the interior of a mobile caravan – that she constructed from a variety of materials, such as steel, wood, papier-mâché and fibreglass. These forms are then covered with tiny glass beads, painstakingly applied, one at a time, with a pair of tweezers. The resultant sculptures have an immediate visceral punch, and sheer aesthetic impact of the work is contrasted with the creeping realisation of the intensely labour-intensive process behind their construction. Dazzling and opulent, her beaded sculptures and installations bristle with a surreal excrescence that is sometimes at odds with the seriousness of her subject matter and themes. Lou’s recent work has tackled the vulnerability of the human body through sculptures that allude to thearchitecture of confinement. Cell (2004-06), for instance, plays