User:Ph8l/sandbox/Henry Owen (artist)

Henry Owen (Born September 17th, 1981) is a contemporary American artist who lives in Boulder, CO. His work has been hailed as “transcendental” and “the visual record of a generation”. He works is several media, including film, and paint, but the majority of his work is sculpture, often ceramics.

Early Life
Owen was born in Charlottesville, VA. His father, Paul Owen is a professor of anthropology. His mother Sarah Owen, nee McClintock, has been a director of fundraising for several universities. At Owen's birth, they were both working at UVa. Owen described his childhood as, "magical, filled with myth and imagination, overtaken by fort-making in the kudzu and elaborate bedtime stories."

China
In 2002, after Owen's second year at the University of Iowa, he received a grant to go to China. This trip was to have a profound impact on his artistic vision. What began as a simple language study in Beijing, quickly turned into a trip throughout the country. Owen has declined to discuss the second half of his year on several occasions What is known has mainly been pieced together by several curators of his work, most notably Dunster Creel. Owen appeared in Harbin for an Ice sculpture contest before making his way to Urumqi. It was during this time that the SARS epidemic made travel in China increasingly complex. Creel suggested that this was what led Owen cut short his trip and return to Beijing and then the United States.

Post-China Paper Work
Critics have often neglected the work that Owen made using paper. Although he would soon move back to ceramics, his first three projects after his return were paintings on handmade paper. Owen learned the art of papermaking in Gansu province. He showed three pieces about six months after his return, Trilateral, Trilateral b, and Trilateral g1. Each were large, with the smallest, Trilateral more than six feet tall and nine feet wide. On his paper, Owen had added semi-geometric designs, reminiscent of the Nazca lines. The titles seem to refer to his grandfather's position on the Trilateral Commission. Owen destroyed Trilateral and Trilateral g1 after his grandfather's death in 2011.Trilateral b was sold and remains in the possession of a private collector.

Post-China Ceramics
Owen's ceramic work focused on the Three Gorges Dam. His final thesis presentation at Iowa was a combination of flash mob and a pirate art installation. The invitations to his show asked guests to arrive at the swimming pool. Upon arrival, they saw a series of identical Chinese sculptures which had been glazed in gaudy colors inside the pool. Through the use of pedestals. Owen was able to have them come out of the water at various depths, including several that were totally submerged. Owen greeted his guests wearing a soaking wet tuxedo.

Multimedia
From 2009 to the summer of 2011, Owen took a break from sculpure and focused almost entirely on digital multimedia, especially video installations.

PushmePullyou
In ‘’PushmePullyou’’, Owen appears on screen, on a split screen, the right half of which contains his upper torso and the left half of which contains that of his collaborator. He and his collaborator appear to face off. The two men heave and strain, and after a few moments, we see that one man’s gain is another’s loss. Despite seeming to face one another, they are actually pulling each other. It dawns on the viewer that the visual connection between the two men is an illusion. The reality, distorted by the method of recording, is that they struggle not only against one another but, blind to the other, back-to-back, looking out only over the great expanse of Colorado’s desert.

But as the viewer comes to realize that the visual connection is manufactured, she must also, simultaneously, come to realize that the actual connections between the men are hidden. The rope, the glue of the piece, is hidden. The viewer must recreate it; she must redraw the scene of two men struggling against one another, in a tension-filled harmony of total exertion. It is not simply the reality or the accuracy of representation that is called into question but the viewer’s ability to follow the twists and turns of the piece. Is Owen pushing or pulling? Is the viewer on the other end of the rope?

Such false connections and their hidden, real counterparts, lie at the heart of much of Owen’s work from this period.

Return to Sculpture
Owen work turned back to sculpture in the summer of 2011. His work to date has been "'a collage of intricate forms, found objects, paint, food, and paint.'" Owen has not showed any of this work to date.

Dunster Creel
Dunster Creel is a peripatetic curator of art exhibits. He is based in Vermont and Brooklyn. He has been a major advocate of Owen's work since seeing his pool-installation in Iowa. He has showed several exhibits at his galleries, including Trilateral in 2003 and Approximate Cause in 2011. Though a dedicate promoter of artists, Creel is reluctant to discuss himself, saying, "the life is about the art, not even the artist should muddy the water, and certainly not a huckster like me."