Lee Lozano: Strike

The exhibition “Strike” features a vast selection of works made by Lee Lozano that cover all of her brief but extremely prolific career, which extended from 1960 to 1972. After studying painting in Chicago, Lozano moved to New York at the beginning of her career and quickly gained notoriety within the art scene in the 1960s for her protean and highly original work. Lozano faced an art world dominated by pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art, especially with regard to painting. She participated in the artistic and social environment of the time, all the while preserving a radical attitude and resisting any form of classification or systemic power.

The exhibition title offers a meditation on the polysemy of the word “strike”. As a verb, “to strike” expresses a violent action, an uncontrollable explosion of energy produced either by the human body, a tool, or a weapon. As a noun, “strike” evokes the radical refusal to work, in reference to Lozano’s famous General Strike Piece (1969), which signalled her first attempt to pull away from the art world. Lozano’s provocative, amusing, and just as lethal “strikes” were addressed as much at the art world as the social, emotional, and political dimensions of her own existence.