Lauren Quin’s paintings possess a distinctive sense of vitality that cannot be fully captured by any single word or image. Organic forms reminiscent of bodies and landscapes move freely between association, evoking memories and sensations unique to each viewer.
Layered with intricate details and defined by a striking sense of scale, her paintings reveal new forms and images as one moves closer to them. Rather than offering a definitive answer, they invite us into an unfamiliar sensory experience through the very act of looking.
At Tokyo Gendai, Pace Gallery’s booth will present a new body of work by Lauren Quin. What emerges when we stand before her paintings? We invite you to experience that moment firsthand, in the presence of the works themselves.
For those who are encountering your work for the first time, could you tell us about your artistic practice?What kinds of themes, ideas, or sensations are you exploring through your paintings?
I am invested in the way the small parts are knitted together. These are large paintings built out of a chorus of small details. Negative marks become positive, using chance and control in equal measure. I layer decisions in search of a harmonious sensitivity. I do not start paintings with a plan for how they will end. I wrestle with them, barter with them, and in the end, I am changed by them.
What moments tend to inspire you the most in your creative process? Could you also share how everyday experiences or observations find their way into your work?
The act of painting has a way of exfoliating my senses. After the studio I feel porous, and I see the world with a different set of eyes. Reliably, I have learned that inspiration can be measured in distance. Every day as I commute home, with every minute I am pulled farther from the studio, I am filled with the regret and impatience of everything I wish I had said to the paintings. I feel I have been cut off mid sentence, and I am eager to win the argument.
Your paintings often feature organic forms that evoke bodies, internal organs, landscapes, or living creatures.What does it mean to you to create images that remain open to multiple interpretations rather than having a single fixed meaning?
When I am inside a painting, I am seeking to describe a certain synchronicity that I have found in the world. There is a magnetic distance between what we can name and what we can feel. Symbols and words pollinate each other, and this leads to unexpected directions. This is an exercise of superstitious abstraction, and the answer is different every time. My favorite and most potent images tend to feel like they were waiting for me all along.
In your recent work, your unique visual language seems to move fluidly between abstraction and representation.How has your approach to painting evolved over time, and how has your thinking about painting changed through your practice?
I don’t feel the need to pit abstraction against representation. If representation describes the edge of a cliff, abstraction is the sensation of falling. Even the most immediate associations are useful, and often the most honest. Painting has a way of forcing me to confront my nature. Over some time, I’ve noticed the habits that form in my work. I treat the habit like a dial, testing what survives in the painting if I change the volume. Earlier this year, I had a show approaching monochromes. In this presentation, I am also working with scale as a medium.
Tokyo Gendai welcomes visitors from Japan and around the world. Is there anything you hope audiences will experience or take away when viewing your work?
There is a crucial reckoning to viewing these works in person. My paintings take on a very different nature on a screen as they do in person, so I am all the more eager to share this new body of work. For those who might have known my work before, I hope I will surprise them.
Thank you very much! We look forward to seeing your work in September.
A feeling found only in front of the work.
Experience Lauren Quin’s world at Tokyo Gendai.
Dates:
11-13 September 2026 (Fri-Sun) *Vernissage: 10 September (Thu)
Venue:
Pacifico Yokohama
Booth:
Pace Gallery
Ticket Purchase:
Lauren Quin (b. 1992, Los Angeles) approaches the act of painting as a process of ongoing inquiry. Her paintings are at once radically intuitive and deeply considered, simultaneously sedimentary and archaeological.
Composed from dynamic, intensely chromatic forms, they challenge our understanding of abstraction while exploring the mutability of language and symbol. Quin received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015 and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, in 2019. In 2017, she held a residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Recent solo exhibitions include Vocal Fry, Friends Indeed Gallery, San Francisco (2021); Pulse Train Howl, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2022); Sagittal Fours, Pond Society, Shanghai (2022); My Hellmouth, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas (2023); Logopanic, 125 Newbury, New York (2024); and Eyelets of Alkaline, Pace Gallery, Los Angeles (2026). Her work is held in public collections worldwide, including the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Long Museum, Shanghai; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai, among others.
Quin lives and works in Los Angeles.
