Mimi Lauter
b. 1982, San Francisco
Lives in Los Angeles
venue
Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University
Woldenberg Art Center #202, Newcomb Circle, New Orleans, LA 70118
Monday, closed
Tuesday–Friday, 10 AM – 5 PM
Saturday–Sunday, 10 AM – 4 PM
neighborhood
About the project
Mimi Lauter combines the natural, spiritual, and psychological in her bold abstractions. In this presentation of Lauter’s work, nearly recognizable forms composed of minute strokes of brilliantly colored soft pastels, dance across multipart works on paper and a large-scale canvas, among her first works to also use oil paint. Her theatrical compositions recall the reverential and grandiose nature of Italian operas from which some works take their titles, while her style evokes modernist aesthetics and pulls inspiration from Redon, Vuillard, Bonnard, as well as other members of the Nabis and Post-Impressionists. Color, gesture, and texture give form to these compositions which simultaneously suggest landscapes, flora, sunsets, seasons, and celestial bodies—natural cycles of life, death, rebirth. These sublime colorscapes are portals to other worlds and inner states, examples of imagined world-building and expressions of self. Like Ron Bechet’s charcoal drawing of live oaks, also on view at Newcomb, Lauter’s work infuses the familiar with the fantastic, revealing possibilities for the transcendent in the world that surrounds us.
about the artist
Originally from San Francisco, Mimi Lauter earned a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Lauter currently resides in Los Angeles, where she creates works on paper of widely varying scale, from the intimate to the expansive, with soft oil pastels in a saturated, riotous palette. Timeless imagery hints towards the figure, subconscious landscapes, plants and foliage, seas and skies, and the personal and universal. Her drawings nods to a European Modernist history with deep roots in religious and spiritual painting, from Medieval paintings and tapestries to the work of artists like Odilon Redon and Hilma Af Klint. Lauter’s work is included in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her solo exhibitions include Symphony No. 1, Blum & Poe, New York (2020); Apres Nous Le Deluge, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2019); and Sensus Oxynation, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2018).
Mimi Lauter, 2021. Installation view: Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, 2021–22. Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, New Orleans. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans. Photos: Alex Marks