Marinaro Gallery is pleased to present Wet Feet, Molly Lowe’s first solo painting exhibition in New York. Known for her multidisciplinary practice spanning sculpture, video, and performance, Lowe’s latest body of work demonstrates a deepened engagement with painting, where abstraction and representation fluidly intertwine.
In Wet Feet, Lowe explores the boundaries between objects, bodies, and spaces, constructing dynamic compositions that shift and merge. Drawing from real-life imagery and magnified details of older, unfinished works, she creates layered paintings that feel both familiar and elusive. Gestural marks, unexpected color combinations, and intuitive strokes—once fragments of larger compositions—are isolated, enlarged, and recontextualized to form new relationships and meanings. While her work leans into abstraction, it remains tethered to reality, evoking a balance between transformation and recognition.
Lowe’s approach involves layering multiple paintings within a single piece, often incorporating three or four different compositions. This technique slows down the reading of the work, creating a sense of simultaneity where multiple perspectives coexist. Rather than presenting a visual puzzle to be solved, her paintings encourage viewers to sit with their ambiguity, embracing a state of fluid interpretation.
A key theme in Wet Feet is the fluidity of boundaries—between figuration and abstraction, between objects and their surroundings, between foreground and background. This interconnectedness echoes the Buddhist concept of shunyata, or emptiness, emphasizing the interdependence of all things. Though painting is inherently a still medium, Lowe captures a sense of movement, where space, form, and emotion continually shift and influence one another.
The exhibition’s title, Wet Feet, reflects Lowe’s commitment to exploration and immersion in new artistic approaches. This body of work marks a shift toward simpler imagery and, in some instances, more minimal brush strokes. Painting, for Lowe, is a process of discovery—each work reaching a point where it feels both resolved and unsolvable.
Molly Lowe (b.1983, Palo Alto, CA) received her MFA from Columbia University and her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She has had solo exhibitions and performances at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Lilith Performance Studio, Malmo, Sweden; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles CA; Suzanne Geiss Company, New York, NY; SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York; and Performa 13, New York, NY. Her films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY and JOAN, Los Angeles, CA. Lowe has participated in residencies at the Shandaken Project, Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Recess Art, New York, NY; and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME. In 2015, she received the New York Foundation for the Arts interdisciplinary artist fellowship award. Lowe lives and works in Redhook, NY.
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