Lois Lane

Southfirst is proud to present Early Paintings and Works on Paper, 1974-1982, the first one person show in nearly twenty-five years presenting the work of Lois Lane. Lane’s nearly-monochromatic paintings and enigmatic collages anticipate painting’s return to figuration, and suggest the possibilities of symbolist narrative in art after minimalism.

Lane’s work of this era is most often monochromatic—white, black or sometimes yellow paintings with simple, abstracted imagery silhouetted on rich surfaces. Lane was a major figure in the New Image Painting movement alongside Susan Rothenberg, Neil Jenney and Robert Moskowitz. One of the paintings in the show, The Two Trees, 1976, was part of the exhibition “New Image Painting” at the Whitney Museum in 1978. The works respond to the legacy of conceptual and minimal art, but suggest ways in which images—of women, men, dogs, birds, dresses—might reenter painting.

Lois Lane (b. 1948) has a BA from the Philadelphia College of Art and an MFA from Yale University. Solo shows include Artists Space (1974), “New Image Painting” (1978), the Whitney Biennial (1979), Willard Gallery, the Akron Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, among other venues. Group exhibitions include PS1, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Hallwalls, the Albright-Knox, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, the Village Voice, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, and Art News and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the MFA Houston, the Albright-Knox, and the National Gallery of Art, among other major institutions. Her work was recently featured in “Painting After Post Modernism,” curated by Barbara Rose, and will be featured in “Social Surfaces,” curated by Jay Sanders and Jamie Stevens. She lives and works in NY, NY and Warwick, NY.