Tristin Lowe: Black Holes & Rabbit Holes
January 22 – March 19, 2022
Yielding nearly 7,000 square feet of space to a single artist for the very first time, Black Holes & Rabbit Holes is a mid-career retrospective that places a medley of Lowe's existing works—alongside never-before-seen projects—into newly imagined tableaus. Inspired by Moore's architecture and defined by its structural limitations, the exhibition invites viewers to experience a wholly immersive invasion of the artist’s large-scale constructed forms that engage creative, mechanical, and scientific discovery while reflecting his exploration of public vs. private space.
Lowe's practice is rooted in multi-disciplinary projects that explore the absurd and transform everyday, mundane materials into awe-inspiring creations. Influenced by theories that explore the science of outer space, the surrealist movement, and fairytales from our childhood, his ongoing work brings disparate worlds together and provokes viewers to consider their surroundings in a new light. Using conventional (and sometimes unorthodox) techniques to realize his sculptural designs, Lowe evokes unfamiliar curiosities & wonders that might otherwise go unnoticed. His installations provide new contexts that force us to reconsider scale, appreciate the eccentric, enjoy the spectacle, and find our place in that relative space he's created—whether we recognize it as comfortable, or undoubtedly troublesome, the observations demand imagination.
Featured works include GODDESS Particle (2021), a newly commissioned fourteen-foot long neon comet that hovers overhead; No Wave Goodbye, Transmutation: Into the Wind (2016) the tail end of a 2001 Volkswagen Passat B5 station wagon suspended from the ceiling; Lunacy (2010), a thirteen-foot diameter, inflatable felted-wool replica of the moon, with all its pocks and craters; and Dumbo and Bourbon Pillow (2001), a life-sized inflatable pink elephant made of vinyl, standing over a pillow saturated with bourbon.
Lowe received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and studied at Parsons School of Design and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has exhibited his work extensively in Philadelphia at venues including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Vox Populi, Girard College, the Rosenbach Museum and Library, the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, Basekamp, the Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Project Room, Abington Art Center, and Nexus Foundation for Today's Art, among others. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at the Telfair Museum, Savannah, GA; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Wheaton Arts, Millville, NJ; Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland; New Langton Arts, San Francisco; University of California, San Diego; Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown, RI; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; and the Centre d'Art Contemporain, Switzerland, among others. He has been awarded a Smithsonian Research Fellowship; Pew Fellowship, Provincetown Fine Art Work Center Fellowship, and Fabric Workshop and Museum and Girard College Residencies. Lowe's work is in collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the West Collection.
