Opening reception: April 7th | 5pm–7pm

Jack Fischer Gallery is pleased to host the second solo exhibition by Los Angeles collage artist Lou Beach.

Lou Beach’s collages are the end result of a demanding process by which a new narrative is born from the discards and detritus of unwanted and forgotten printed material; often old children’s books, posters, pamphlets, postcards and other ephemera. The choice of antique elements is deliberate - it imbues the collages with a sense of history as well as providing texture and color that is lacking in more contemporary material.

I have always said that collage is the easiest thing to do badly.

Lou writes: “I have heard it said that anyone can make a collage and that it is child’s play, but I find it difficult; each work is a laborious task of discovery and invention with numerous mistakes, false starts, delusions, distractions and dead ends before the picture and its meaning reveals itself. My intention is always to create something poetic, but inevitably end up with a cartoon or fairy tale. I work in chaos.”  
 
According to Edward Hopper: “The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.”
 
Lou Beach’s vision is on full view in these works as well as his personality: humorous, intelligent and unique. 

After working many years as an award-winning illustrator for magazines and record companies, Lou Beach returned to his non-commercial, hand-made collage roots. Urged on by his adult artist children he had a solo show at Billy Shire Fine Arts (L.A.) in 2009 and has been showing in galleries since then in New York, Chicago, Vermont, Poland, and Los Angeles where he is represented by Craig Krull Gallery. A self-taught artist, he considers himself a 'sophisticated primitive'. His work has been widely collected and is in the permanent collection of the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago and in the holdings of prominent collector Beth Rudin DeWoody.