L.A. LOUVER
7 June - 1 September 2023
The Flower Show: Symbolism
Throughout time, flowers have been used to symbolize the breadth of human experience, from universal feelings of celebration, longing, and mourning; intimately personal meanings shared between family members, friends, and romantic partners; to culturally specific signals of etiquette, identity, and religious iconography.
Selected from more than 80 works featured in The Flower Show at L.A. Louver, we highlight nine from the exhibition that exemplify the symbolic use of the flower.
Rebecca Campbell
Rebecca Campbell
Where Have You Been My Blue-Eyed Son?, 2023
oil on canvas
48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm)
signed and dated verso
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Completed in April of 2023, Rebecca Campbell reflects on the painting: "Creamed leather popsicle of color and perfume, gravestone, blessing, calendar, it seems a flower can carry anything we ask. I’ve asked this flower to carry the weight of vulnerability and the power of resilience. A hard rain is always falling somewhere for someone and whether you are in the storm yourself or watching someone you love push through, the unyielding tether between burden and growth is as beautiful as it heartbreaking.”
Installation of The Flower Show at L.A. Louver.
Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer, 2023.
Petah Coyne
Petah Coyne
Untitled #1538 (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), 2021-2023
specially-formulated wax, silk flowers, pigment, wire, jaw-to-jaw swivel, quick-link shackles, silk Duchesse satin, 5/16" Grade 30 Proof coil chain, paper towels, Velcro, thread, and plastic
33 1/2 x 18 1/4 x 15 1/2 in. (85.1 x 46.4 x 39.4 cm)
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Petah Coyne
Untitled #1538 (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), 2021-2023
(detail)
In Petah Coyne’s striking sculpture Untitled #1538 (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) (2021-2023), transformation and constancy are communicated through the materiality of the work that includes an opulent bouquet and three floor bound flowers comprised of wax and silk; a memorialization of the ephemeral. Coyne’s installation symbolizes a collective mourning through an unorthodox monument which employs dichotomies to express the paradoxes of reality.
Installation of The Flower Show at L.A. Louver.
Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer, 2023.
Eileen Cowin
Eileen Cowin
...Seemingly Without End I, 2022/2023
archival pigment print
10 5/8 x 16 in. (27 x 40.6 cm)
Framed: 11 1/2 x 17 in. (29.2 x 43.2 cm)
Edition of 3
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Eileen Cowin
...Seemingly Without End II, 2022/2023
archival pigment print
10 5/8 x 16 in. (27 x 40.6 cm)
Framed: 11 1/2 x 17 in. (29.2 x 43.2 cm)
Edition of 3
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Eileen Cowin
...Seemingly Without End III, 2022/2023
archival pigment print
10 5/8 x 16 in. (27 x 40.6 cm)
Framed: 11 1/2 x 17 in. (29.2 x 43.2 cm)
Edition of 3
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Emerging from darkness, Eileen Cowin’s Seemingly without End (2023) series is a focused study and contemplation of flowers as a symbol of hope.
In the Cowin’s words: “Our global experience with COVID was like something out of science fiction. At first, I felt incapable of responding to this horrific time. I needed to extend what I had done before yet make a break with it, to do something unexpected, something that had an elegiac quality. I started to photograph flowers. I realized I had to fend off despair with beauty inspired by the line from Louise Erdrich’s novel, The Sentence: But in the despair of routine any aberration is a radiant signal.”
Flora Kao
Flora Kao
Pyre, 2023
Video projection
Duration: 9:17 minutes
Edition of 3
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Flora Kao
Pyre, 2023
archival inkjet print
paper: 10 x 10 in (25.4 x 25.4 cm)
Edition of 3
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Flora Kao has recently engaged with the floral motif in response to the death of her grandparents. Unable to travel during the pandemic, Kao was forced to mourn her loss from afar. In Taiwan’s Buddhist tradition, grieving family members fold and burn origami lotus forms over a period of weeks. Struck by the powerful symbol of the ritual burning both as a portal for the dead to the afterlife, and for those mourning to solace, Kao created a series of photographs as well as the video Pyre, 2023 that incorporates the rhythmic chants of Buddhist sutras to explore the mesmerizing beauty of the burning flower offerings.
Enrique Martínez Celaya
Enrique Martínez Celaya
The Omen (Lily and Daisy), 2023
oil and wax on canvas
72 x 60 in. (182.9 x 152.4 cm)
Framed: 73 3/4 x 62 in. (187.3 x 157.5 cm)
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Symbolism pervades The Omen (Lily and Daisy) (2023) by Enrique Martínez Celaya, where flowers stand in for the human figure and the sea represents time. The duality of transience and permanence is embedded within the composition: the constancy of ocean waves a backdrop to the fleeting life and beauty of flowers.
Installation of The Flower Show at L.A. Louver.
Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer, 2023.
Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta (1948-1985)
Flower Person, Flower Body, 1975
color photograph
Photo: 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)
Framed: 22 1/2 x 28 3/4 in. (57.2 x 73 cm)
Edition of 10
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Flower Person, Flower Body (1975) is a powerful meditation on the vulnerability and beauty of the human body and the passage of time, represented in the exhibition by two distinct works taking the form of a Super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media and an accompanying photograph from the film. In Flower Person, Flower Body Mendieta creates a body comprised of pale pink blossoms borne by a cerise colored cloth as it floats down a river. Subjected to the currents of the water the flower body is gently pulled apart during the course of its journey. Consistent with the other siluetas created by Mendieta, this work draws a parallel between the female body and the environment, and offers an ever relevant commentary on the colonization of each.
Kathy Moss
Kathy Moss
Afterlife, 2013
charcoal on rag vellum paper
Paper: 22 x 13 1/2 in. (55.9 x 34.3 cm)
Framed: 24 3/4 x 15 3/4 in. (62.9 x 40 cm)
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Kathy Moss’s Afterlife (2013) presents the flower as a symbol of loss. Distinct from a funerial flower given sympathetically, the sunflower in Afterlife is a literal depiction of death, a fact underscored by the charcoal medium and opaque vellum support. A symbolic action is recorded in the folding of the paper at the bottom of the image, inferring direction, into space or after life.
Tsherin Sherpa
Tsherin Sherpa
Flora 4, 2017-18
gold leaf, acrylic, and ink on cotton
27 1/2 x 24 in. (69.9 x 61 cm)
Framed: 31 x 26 in. (78.7 x 66 cm)
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Tsherin Sherpa has created a floral form comprised of a swirling arrangement of hands that gesture mudras. A mudra is a hand gesture used in yoga, meditation, or dance rituals, often utilized to link the body with Buddhist or Hindu symbolic values.
Flora 4 includes the abhaya mudra (fierce protection and strength), padma mudra (symbol of the lotus and enlightenment), rudra mudra (gesture of strength linked to the solar plexus chakra), hamsasya mudra (healing and opening of the heart chakra), apana mudra (channeling the flow of vital life and balance), pushpaputa mudra (“handful of flowers,” openness of mind and soul), and prana mudra (gesture of life and increasing vitality).
Tsherin Sherpa
Flora 4, 2017-18 (detail)
Tom Wudl
Tom Wudl
Radiance of Sublime Reality Filling the Cosmos without End, 2015
acrylic, 22 karat gold, gum arabic, pencil and gouache on rice paper over wood panel
60 x 72 in. (152.4 x 182.9 cm)
Framed: 63 1/4 x 75 1/4 x 3 1/2 in. (160.7 x 191.1 x 8.9 cm)
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Painted larger than life, a meticulously rendered bejeweled lotus blossom takes center stage in Tom Wudl’s Radiance of Sublime Reality Filling the Cosmos without End (2015). Drawing inspiration from the Buddhist Avatamsaka Sutra (The Flower Ornament Scripture), Wudl merges aesthetics and mysticism by employing formal conventions to visually represent the interconnectivity and interdependence of all things within a cosmos of infinite realms. The flower symbolizes all that is beautiful within a universe of potential.
Tom Wudl
Radiance of Sublime Reality Filling the Cosmos without End, 2015 (detail)