Laura Owens & Vincent van Gogh

Sumptuous wallpaper installations in conversation with Van Gogh’s final works

This catalog brings together works by Los Angeles-based artist Laura Owens (born 1970) and seven paintings by Vincent van Gogh, painted in the last years of his life. Confined to her studio in Arles during the months of lockdown in 2020, Owens immersed herself in the life and works of Van Gogh, a process which left traces of his sensibilities in the commissioned work that followed. Transforming the space of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles, Owens created a monumental wallpaper using various handcrafted and digital techniques. The motifs of these rooms, which draw a suspended universe between the premodern and the contemporary, are inspired by the works of the English designer Winifred How, and enter into a close dialogue with Van Gogh’s paintings, which are hung on the elaborately adorned walls.