Andrew Owen _ Lot 0

Independent

Title: BRILLIANT CUT DIAMOND: EXCAVATION MAQUETTE

BRILLIANT CUT DIAMOND: EXCAVATION MAQUETTE is literally an "Art Gem," an artwork of a diamond, produced as a design maquette for a much larger artwork. Signed with variation of artist’s seal in Chinese, 文 (Wen) This “reverse collage” is excavated from layers of found outdoor advertising poster hoardings. From the artist’s extensive EXCAVATIONS series exhibited in Seoul, Korea; Osaka, Japan; Vancouver and Toronto, Canada.

Dimensions: 16" x 20" x 1" Framed

Medium: excavated found advertising poster hoarding, archival anti-UV varnish - white shadowbox frame

Value: $ 3,000

Date: 2025

Andrew Owen’s basic idea is elusive. But then that’s exactly the core of Andrew Owen’s basic idea: that a great deal eludes us, perhaps nowhere more than in the consumerized West. We live, asserts Owen (who also goes by the name AO1)—via the impressive range of work that comprises his first solo show in Canada in almost 20 years—on the twilight side of a yawning subjectivity gap, a chasm of personal and cultural bias that separates us from the truth about…well, just about anything. Art objects are crucially implicated in this analysis, of course, with the subjectivities of both the artist and the viewer contributing to a permanently flawed communication. How to conquer that? This is in effect what Owen asks. His answer: to get the artist out of the way to whatever degree possible. Each work in this show represents a discrete attempt on Owen’s part to do so. I say “elusive” because the idea takes some teasing out. At first glance, the show incorporates work so varied in terms of media and aesthetic tone—from floral paintings to fragmented photographic collages to repurposed ad-covered hoardings—that it would be easy enough to conclude that three or four artists were involved. But it’s all Owen, and all in the same conceptual key. Once we sense this harmonization, the body of work transmutes satisfyingly from multifarious to cohesive.