Throughout his career, Tristin Lowe has mined the crude and rude, the absurd and abject, and the mundane and metaphysical in pursuit of tentative answers to deep questions about our place in the universe and the meaning of existence. Playing the role of the garage hobbyist cum alchemist, Lowe employs jerry-rigged technology transforming humble objects that rise above the quotidian and venture into the realms of the philosophical, the scientific, and the occult. Lowe makes drawings from greasepaint and fire; utilizes edible materials such as butter, chocolate, and alcohol in the creation of comically pathetic installations (beds that wet themselves, pillows that smoke); and crafts large-scale sculptures of animate and inanimate things using an assortment of materials including wood, frost, metal, inflatable plastic, textile, felt, and neon. Over the past fifteen years, Lowe’s sculptures have ranged from a pheromone-emitting, musky, hairy creature (Pheromone Trailing, 1998) to a two-story folding chair (Folding Deck Chair, 2004) to a life-size replica of an albino sperm whale made from inflated plastic and felt (Mocha Dick, 2009), among an array of others. Mocha Dick was created during Lowe’s second residency at The Fabric Workshop and Museum.
Artist Statement courtesy of the artist and Fleisher/Ollman, Philadelphia.
Lowe is also the focus of an exhibition at Fleisher/Ollman (1216 Arch Street, 5A), Philadelphia. Tristin Lowe: Exile Sun, on view Friday, February 21–Saturday, April 5, 2014.