Art Opening: (Society for the Preservation of) Lowell Darling Drawings
Future Studio Gallery is super happy to host a show of Mr. Darling’s recent drawings, and maybe a few early pieces. He is the kind of artist we love best—smart, empathic, engaged, really funny—and he’s in it for the pure love of art and the process of doing art stuff.
Lowell Darling is an American conceptual artist most notable for a series of performances in the 1970s that included nailing cities to the earth, conducting “urban acupuncture” by placing oversize needles in the ground, and stitching up the San Andreas Fault. His art includes a run for public office in the 1978 California gubernatorial election, when his primary challenge to Governor Jerry Brown received some 62,000 votes. He is the creator of the “Fat City School of Finds Art,” an unaccredited institution that grants free Masters and PhD degrees to arts students.
In 2010, 32 years after their last election faceoff, Darling once again challenged Jerry Brown in the race for governor. He has described that 2010 run as a means to raise awareness about California’s requirement of a two-thirds majority to pass a budget or tax.
“I use myself to make my art. I guess I am the art, though I hate the corniness of that idea and have always sort of fought against the little movements art critics give us. I’ve been called a conceptual artist, a video artist, a performance artist, a media artist, a correspondence artist you name it, even a ceramist for Christ’s sake. I think I may have even started a few. But I’ve always been only Lowell Darling. I’m not a member of anything. I’m simply just another lousy human body with a lot of ideas trying to escape.”
After the opening, the exhibition is on view by appointment to April 4.
