Lee Lonzano, Slide (1965), all photos via Hauser & Wirth
Hauser & Wirth is currently presenting Drawings and Paintings, a historical survey of artist Lee Lozano at the gallery’s Chelsea space on 18th Street, featuring a selection of critically significant works from 1964 and 1965.  Lozano’s pieces, expressive in their energy and form, showcase depth in exploring issues relating to both gender and the body in general, with drawings and paintings suggesting intersections and geometric interplays using color, line, gradient, and variations of perspective.
Lee Lozano, No title (1964—1965), via Hauser & Wirth
Upon walking into the gallery space, the viewer encounters a hallway space displaying a series of small drawings, revealing the various pencil and graphite studies in which Lozano often worked.  Many of the drawings are on graphite paper, showing boxes with perspective drawings within.  The different markings of the graphite are intentional, showing varying breadths and alterations in gradient as well as lighter forms intersecting them.  They have “modern styling”, as echoed by Lozano herself in the notes she has written on many of these works.
Lee Lozano, Untitled, (1964—1965), via Hauser & Wirth
The perspectives of these drawings are intriguing, with the exhibited works serving as studies for some of her larger-scaled pieces on view in the main gallery. Lozano merges creative expression with the use of paint, language, and action,  allowing lines to shade over each other, often forming complex layers, and illustrating the greater depth her works have in engaging with outlying viewpoints.  Her multi-layered paintings are often broken into several parts, bringing color to the forefront while playing on different tones and shades of each hue.  Her practice of intersecting lines and gradient variation appears here repeatedly.
 Lee Lozano, Untitled, (1964—1965), via Hauser & Wirth
Lee Lonzano, Lean (1966), via Hauser & Wirth
Manipulating oil paint, Lozano creates color transitions in different geometric forms, allowing her canvases to come together as organic, elegant compositions.  Different shapes and sizes turn her works into large-scale puzzle pieces, embodying different explorative ideas.  Each title gives the hard edges and the physical relations between each piece of canvas a special relation to the body, and broader concepts of dimensionality.
Lee Lozano’s Drawings and Paintings is on view at Hauser & Wirth until July 31, 2015.
— A. Zlotowitz
Read more:
Exhibition Page [Hauser & Wirth]
