This is the first exhibition dedicated to Lee Lozano's work in France. How has her work marked the history of contemporary art?

Sarah Cosulich: It's important to point out that Lee Lozano is not an artist being rediscovered. She's always been there. She's just been there in the way she wanted to. Actually, when she dropped out from the art world with her conceptual work in 1972, she was at a very important moment of her career. So, her decision of leaving the artwork is a very radical action, but it's not an abandonment. She's an artist that moves from figuration to abstraction to conceptual art. And she's talented. She's incredibly coherent. She moves from one medium to the other, but at the same time, she's not changing. She's just pursuing the same exact attitude. Maybe we could say that she's brave, she's courageous. She never comes to compromises. So when she actually drops out from the art world, she's not leaving the art, being an artist. She continues being an artist. Actually, it could almost be said that her dropping out is a continuous performance that goes on for those 30 years, almost 30 years, until her death.

What does the title “Strike” evoke?

Lucrezia Calabro Visconti: The main reference that “Strike” gives is its relationship to General Strike Piece, which is one of the latest works by Lozano. It's one of her conceptual pieces; it comes from 1969. And so, we decided to start from this piece, so somehow we start from the end of her practice. And specifically from her first withdrawal from the art scene. And the reason why we started from that piece is that we think that sort of attitude, this idea of striking, can really be seen as something that shapes her whole attitude in all of the different parts of her career and all of the different parts of her life, in a way. Because a strike is not only talking about not working; it's a wider vision of labour, as an emotional labour, as the kind of labour which is required by an artist, and especially a woman artist in that context, which is New York 60s. And in General Strike Piece, what Lozano says is that she's going to stop taking part in the “mondain” events of the art system. So her strike is specifically related to those events, not to art in general, to pursue what she defines as a total personal and public revolution.

And so, this pursuit of this revolution is something that we have been noticing within her old practice. So, we were really trying to find a word which would be one of her words, because, of course, with language, she was completely able to talk about her own attitude, and which could be very much reflecting and respecting her contradictions and the changes that she pursued in her practice. 

Lee Lozano, particularly in her drawings, combines industrial vocabulary with sexual connotations. Explicit slogans are also present. Was the artist developing a political stance or making claims?

L.C.V. : Talking about political stances and demands when thinking about Lozano's work is very tricky. She is really trying to tackle, let's say, power dynamics, power relationships. And this is very clear, especially in how deliberately scandalous she is in the fact that very often we have extremely explicit language, visual language, and verbal language. It's sometimes quite rude, quite dirty. And this is something which is specifically related to a tradition which doesn't go to erotic drawings. It's way more related to satire. It was something that had a political role at the time because not deciding to comply with the expectations of society at the time was something which was political per se. Jo Applin, for example, is talking about “scandalous feminism” in reaction to Lozano's practice in this sense.

Still, something which is very important to tackle is the fact that even though she has this extremely critical, extremely polemical, and sometimes really sarcastic perspective in her practice, she's always distancing herself from organized forms of counterculture, even if she was completely part of that and that vibe. And as we said, it's the '60s in New York, so it's everything which is leading up to what here in France was '68. So it's a very precise moment in time, extremely charged politically, but still, she will be always keen to not be part of movements.  

The exhibition features both abstract works and figurative drawings. What determines this paradigm shift?

S.C. : We could say that there is no shift in the sense that this is really what we would like to show in the exhibition, how one thing comes after the other so naturally and so inevitably. So, the exhibition, of course, starts with her first figurative work, but you see how many elements are present even later in her abstract and in her conception. So for example, you have her obsession into trying to enter the body, this penetrating the body through object tools, and this idea of going inside the bowels, which is something she really wants to do because she says the artist cannot depict the inside of the body. So, all these elements penetrating the body. And then in the abstract work, you see this drive, this drive towards penetrating the cosmos, going beyond, going into space, transcendence. So, that is very connected. At the same time, from figuration to abstraction, you have this sense of the gesture, the violent gesture, this blow, this strike. You see it in her first drawings. You see it in her somehow dirty imagery, you see it in her expressionistic attitude. But at the same time, this violent gesture moves into the tools and then into these incredible abstract compositions that pierce.

And even the way they're titled, the abstract, are titled with verbs. All the other work of Lee Lozano is untitled, but these are verbs. These are “cram”, “spin”, “clamp”. So again, action, but also an interest for language and energy. Again, another concern that starts from the beginning. Even her first very formal drawings, self-portraits, already show this dissolution of energy that then takes her into disappearing, changing names, somehow substantiating this energy into her names until taking the “E” as a name and then wanting to be buried with no names. So energy, language, action.  

How does the exhibition fit in with the “Mythologies américaines” season?

L.C.V. : Of course, in Lozano's work, the American mythologies are very often tackled, both in her writing and in her practice, there is this very beautiful painting which shows a gun which is shooting out the shape of the United States together with the breast and the punch. So the violence, the brutality sometimes of American mythologies is very present in her work, as well as American mythologies in the sense of the countercultural movements, which happens to be in the '60s. So that's something that is very much connecting her, I think, to Mike Kelley's work. And in both cases, there is this reflection and breathing of this countercultural vibe and this vision against somehow modernist values. He started working just 10, 15 years after Lozano dropped out. So, there is a very beautiful connection and story that takes place in the building. Well, of course, I don't want to force interpretation on all of the other artists, but also with Mira Schor, the fact that both of them in very different ways were writing about their practice but not only about their practice, about art, society in such a sharp, critical tone is something that, I don't know, I feel really can make their practice resonate. Especially for the fact that Mira Schor comes from a very different generation in which, for example, the complicated relationship with feminism that Lozano had was solved in a completely different way.

So, I think it really gives a wider vision also of that American mythology, which, of course, was transnational at the time, but still the way in which feminism was seen at the time. And Ser Serpas, it's just the perspective of challenging painting in such a physical way in terms of really how much the body and bodily fluids and the reaction of the body itself to painting as a wider practice, extended practice is something which, I don't know, makes me think a lot about Lozano. So we're very, very happy that this is the frame in which the Lozano work is positioned because it complexifies and deepen a lot what somehow her heritage also have been later on.

How does the exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce provide a different interpretation of Lee Lozano's work? 

S.C. : This has a lot to do also with the choice that we made with Lucrezia in the presentation of the exhibition, because the exhibition is chronological. We really want to present her work, her practice, in a way that the public can really jump in it. At the same time, we started with General Strike Piece, with the work that belongs to the end, because that was a way that we wanted to, right from the beginning, show how radical, how much she goes against, against rules, against systems, against expectations, against power, by deciding to leave the art world.

And she does it with General Strike Piece, gradually, by not going to visit galleries, not going to visit museums, you already, as a visitor, become aware of this refusal of adapting, which is something that then progresses through the exhibitions. You get into the rooms of the drawings, and you see all these power systems and all this imagery that are like really punches against every category. Then you move to the bodies, and you see how much she's trying to enter the body and going against any type of representation that is acceptable. I mean, everything, every point she makes is made through a contradiction. And so this is very much what Lee Lozano is, and this is very much what the exhibition aims at showing, at presenting.  

The exhibition concludes with the artist's handwritten notebooks. What do they represent?

L.C.V. : The handwritten notebooks at the end of the show for us are really one of the most insightful ways to get into Lozano's practice and Lozano's mind. Basically, they go from '69 to '71, but then they get all edited together in '72, just before she just drops out entirely from the art system. And what happens in the notebooks is really this materialization of an attempt that she talks about, which is the one of fusing art and life. And so actually the language piece is that she's most known for all come from the diaries, and they are called Life-Art Pieces by Lozano. There is a transformation which goes from the very beginning of her practice till there, which is the one of trying to depict forms of energy. Which is something that she does in a small-size drawing, still the canvases, and then somehow the energies just go beyond the canvas itself. So, it's inevitable that her practice as well goes into life; so, it bursts out of life. So, the language pieces are as important as everything else that takes place in her work. This is something which is important to state, and we think it's really a fantastic entry point into her practice.

How do the artist's works resonate with our times?

L.C.V. : Maybe something that really comes back to the reason why it is very meaningful, we think, to show Lozano here in France for the first time, that it was important to show her in Italy for the first time, is the fact that the context in which we are working is not that different sometimes from the ones in which she was working. So much of her practice and of her attitude, her critical attitude, her radical attitude is still extremely resonant and relevant today.

How did the collaboration between the Pinacoteca Agnelli and the Pinault Collection come about?

S.C. : We are very proud of this collaboration that started in a very spontaneous way. Lucrezia and I have started to do research on Lee Lozano, and we planned it for our institution, Pinacoteca Agnelli in Torino, and we designed the exhibition for the spaces. At the same time, while we were doing this research, we realized how much of the really important, relevant work is in the Pinault Collection. And so we have asked to the Pinault Collection for the loans, of course, hoping to be able to count on those works. And the institution came back saying, fantastic, we would like then to bring your exhibition here. So the immense opportunity of doing research on an artist and thinking about how to present the work in one place, and then at the same time, having to redesign the exhibition, the path, the narrative in another place is really quite a challenge also. It puts us in contact with Lee Lozano for such a long amount of time that now we are almost too close to her, in a way that we cannot take a distance. But of course it has allowed us to look at her work from different perspectives.

And one thing that is really important about Lee Lozano's presentation on this occasion, on both occasions, is that she was not so present in Europe, and she had never been presented in Italy nor in France. So this, in both cases, was the first exhibition, and it is also the first book on Lee Lozano that we have produced that has texts in Italian and in French. So, we would like that publication, that is not just an exhibition catalogue, but it's also an anthology because it contains also selected texts from important scholars. That is really an occasion to bring back Lee Lozano in the art historical discourse and have her become studied more and more.