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Lucia Love

Lucia Love’s debut solo exhibition at JDJ brings together seven visually rich paintings loaded with narrative and symbolism, with references to art history, mythology, politics, and the dynamics of power.

Installation view, JDJ, Garrison, NY, 2020

Lucia Love
Long Pour, 2020
Oil on panel
20 × 30 inches

Like works of speculative fiction, each painting contains a pastiche of fantasy and reality, as elements sourced from news media exist on an equal plane to those of pure imagination.

Lucia Love
High on my Dark Horse, 2020
Oil on canvas
60 × 60 inches

Lucia Love
Holding Pattern, 2019
Oil on panel
18 × 24 inches

The paintings are bound by their depictions of contradictory states. The juxtapositions of doom and hope, tragedy and comedy, and destruction and renewal depicted in the works feel uniquely American, and particularly poignant at this distinct moment in our society as we face disaster after disaster and yet we continue to hang on to the possibility for a brighter future.

Lucia Love
House on the Hill, 2020
Oil on canvas
60 × 48 inches

At the heart of this exhibition are a series of new paintings that incorporate images of fire and water, opposing elements that convey a host of interpretations: from the occult, to the symbolic, to the very real environmental disasters we currently face on both coasts of America.

Lucia Love
Lady of the Lake, 2020
Oil on panel
24 × 48 inches

The painting Wacky Inflatable Flailing Firearms, 2020 features a wind dancer made from flames, a mascot for our time and place, flailing its fire arms with impunity—and a smile. The suggestion of violence is paired with the goofy nature of our consumerist landscape, where wind dancers can be found in their natural habitat. Love’s technical prowess and their ability to juxtapose several painting styles within one composition are on display, from the convincing realism of the facist-looking, eagle-adorned concrete plinth from which the wind dancer rises to the sleek, two-toned minimalist approach to the background.

Wacky Inflatable Flailing Firearms, 2020
Oil on panel
40 × 30 inches

In Pig Roast, 2020, a group of business people sit in a circle as if they are at a conference, paying no attention to the towering flames surrounding them. They conduct their meeting in shackles, all the while behaving quite naturally, as though they are accustomed to this state of human bondage. They seem to be summoning a giant pig demon, a symbol of excess. Here again we see the contrasting approaches to painting styles within one picture: the cartoonish two-dimensionality of the grotesque swine and the swirling flames that feel almost topographical in their appearance.

Lucia Love
Pig Roast, 2020
Oil on panel
36 × 42 inches

Lucia Love (b. 1988, New York, NY) attended the School of Visual Arts on a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, where they studied painting and animation. They are a co-host of the podcast Art and Labor, which chronicles the stories of social justice organizing within the art world and advocates for fair labor practices for artists, museum workers, art handlers, interns, and anyone traditionally overworked and underpaid in the field. 

Lucia Love CV

Press release & Checklist