The Knowledge of Tree

detail of a laura owens room-sized painting at matthew marks, focused on a tree, actually now it is clear it is two trees with trunks twisting around each other, painted in thick, frosting like brushstrokes, against a crisp, brighter screenprinted background of a lattice wall in a garden of seasonal flowers. actually, there are two lattices; in between the tree and the background is another, more dense, intricate lattice with a couple of openings in it. if it's a fence, it is at a very different scale from the other elements in this section of the painting. on the right, meanwhile, is a plant/tree/bush-like composition which seems to take shape from a variety of screenprint, painting and cutout processes, but is actually not cut out at all. at matthew marks in march 2025

I kept catching myself being attracted to the thick impasto schmears of paint in Laura Owens’ show at Matthew Marks. There was one metallic gold paint object—some of them almost seem to substantial to call them brushstrokes—that sat atop a seam in the panels of the main room, and yes, it turns out she kept working on it after it was installed.

So this tree in the center of the main room felt like the centerpiece, the bravura moment in an already almost unfathomably impressive painting installation.

a detail of a room-sized painting by laura owens, of two trees or bushes next to each other, painted in wildly divergent styles; the one on the left is very brushy, and on top of it, owens has made even more pronounced, thick frosting-like brushstrokes in greens and browns. on the right, a screenprinted pattern atop a thin, brushed branch appears to be cut out and collaged on top of a screenprinted background, but it was actually screenprinted there itself. at matthew marks gallery in march 2025

But even the instant after I took the photo above, I realized that the tree next to it is just as impressive and alluring; it just did it by not standing out [literally]. Should I retake a picture of them together? The combination of silkscreen and painting, the composition, the visual layering—the actual layering? How does this even work? There’s fluidity, or viscosity, on one hand, and precision and control on the other, but fluency all around.

I’m barely able to process the experience of seeing Owens’ show once; but I keep wondering what the experience of making it was like, and the experience of conceiving it, and marveling at it at every turn.

a white guy's hand holding a hardback cover of west wing reads, with a dust jacket that is a photo of the oval office, empty, with the title in two typefaces, and the presidential seal in the middle. behind the book is a purple wrapped cabinet of wonder, each drawer containing another artist book. the corner of a red white and blue board book with some plastic contraption on the cover, I can't remember, maybe it was about candy cigarettes? the drawer pull is in the shape of a half-smoked cigarette. all by the artist laura owens, and shown at matthew marks gallery in march 2025
Laura Owens, West Wing Reads, 2019, commercial print-on-demand book with dust jacket, on view at Matthew Marks Gallery

[It’s a contrast, in a way, with the artist books in their cabinets next door. Every single one felt like an understandable achievement, but it was possible to grasp the reality of their creation, even the mindblowing ones that were drawn by hand in unique editions. What is hard to grasp is the scope of her overall book practice. Even as someone who makes art objects that are books, it sometimes feels like she’s inventing entire new genres. Her 2019 work, West Wing Reads, for example, a scraping or compilation of right-wing news reports during the Trump presidency, was like a slab of malevolent poison in the innocuous form of a banal airport book. The sequel, which is probably being written by AI as I type this, will be even worse.]