Riot Rumphaus

COLLAGE ON VIEW

Lou Beach: “Riot Rumphaus”
at Jack Fischer’s Minnesota Street Project
in San Francisco, California, USA
7 April-19 May 2018

Lou Beachʼs collages are the end result of a demanding process by which a new narrative is born from the discards and detritus of unwanted and forgotten printed material; often old childrenʼs books, posters, pamphlets, postcards and other ephemera. The choice of antique elements is deliberate–it imbues the collages with a sense of history as well as providing texture and colour that is lacking in more contemporary material.

Lou Beach writes: “I have heard it said that anyone can make a collage and that it is childʼs play, but I find it difficult; each work is a labourious task of discovery and invention with numerous mistakes, false starts, delusions, distractions and dead ends before the picture and its meaning reveals itself. My intention is always to create something poetic, but inevitably end up with a cartoon or fairy tale. I work in chaos.”

According to Edward Hopper: “The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.”

About the artist:
After working many years as an award-winning illustrator for magazines and record companies, Lou Beach returned to his non-commercial, hand-made collage roots. Urged on by his adult artist children he had a solo show at Billy Shire Fine Arts in Los Angeles in 2009 and has been showing in galleries since then in New York, Chicago, Vermont, Poland, and Los Angeles where he is represented by Craig Krull Gallery. A self-taught artist, he considers himself a “sophisticated primitive”. His work has been widely collected and is in the permanent collection of the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a recipient of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.

Lou Beach was featured in Kolaj #6 in an interview with W. David Powell, “Beach Salad”. His collage, Ring Ring, Too Fat for Me, was the front cover image.

(adapted from the gallery’s press materials)


INFORMATION

Jack Fischer Gallery
1275 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, California 94107 USA
(415) 522-1178

Hours:
Tuesday-Saturday, 11AM-5:30PM
and by appointment

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Images (top to bottom):
Lady Maga (Que Sarah, Sarah)
by Lou Beach
18″x24″
collage
2018
Image courtesy of the artist and Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco

(Some) Very Fine People
by Lou Beach
18″x24″
collage
2018
Image courtesy of the artist and Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco