One of the many reasons artists like Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly, and other mid-20th-century pioneers of painterly abstraction were so innovative for their time is the use of the deliberate yet loose brushstroke. Pollock intuitively dribbled and splattered paint on surfaces spread across the floor of his studio, and Kline created bold, monochromatic paintings with just a few deceptively simple, gestural strokes of a large brush. It’s this visceral approach to visual rhythms and color that continues to awe us today. (A major retrospective highlighting both Krasner and Pollock’s work is slated for The Met later this year.)

For artist Liza Lou, the calculation of brushstrokes, color, and gesture opens the door to another media type altogether—beads. The artist is known for using the material, including a large-scale installation titled “Kitchen,” which took five years to create. In her recent work, she adds thousands of the diminutive baubles in myriad colors, shapes, and sizes to sweeps of oil paint on canvas. Tapping into the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, Lou parses the relationship between gesture, intention, organic forms, and the brushstroke as a subject unto itself.

Lou’s works appear this month in FAQ, a solo exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac. The title references questions that the artist returns to again and again in her practice. When does a painting become not a painting? Can a brushstroke be more than a brushstroke? “These works are about amplification—about making things more ideal,” Lou says. “There’s a poem by Fernando Pessoa where he writes about wanting flowers to be more flowers than flowers, and in this body of work I’m using my material as a way to make paint more paint than paint.”

Unlike a quick swipe of a brush, each bead is meticulously placed amid a field of others, creating a chromatic topography. Lou likens them to painting “straight-out-of-the-tube,” except that they can’t be mixed on the canvas. She relies on color relationships, textures, and precise placement to give the impression that, from a distance, the loose strokes and splatters have blended or merged. When viewed up close, we see distinct, saturated topographies that, in a rather macro sense, are delightfully sculptural with the soft ground of painted details underneath. “My process involves this improv where every stroke requires everything I have, my full attention,” Lou says. “Every mark becomes this kind of violin-crescendo-holy shit-experience.”

FAQ opens on April 10 and continues through May 23 in London. See more on Lou’s Instagram.

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