Laura Owens (b. 1970)

'In Untitled...an explosive looking flower springs from a stack of framed reproductions of Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers. An atomic cluster of dabs, botches, squirts of paint and pencil squiggles, it is a wild cuckoo weed growing out of the irreverently piled up masterpieces. Although this seems to be a disrespectful way to treat Van Gogh's work, the drawing is, in fact, a celebration of the history of painting and its accessibility in our age of mass reproduction...Owens [leads] us into an investigation of the interdependency of painting and photography, not to mention painting and design, painting and architecture, painting and textiles, and of course, painting and painting'

(K. Bell quoted in The Mystery of Painting, exh. cat., Munich, Sammlung Goetz, 2001-2002, p. 153).