Lauren Quin Biography
Born in Los Angeles in 1992 but raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Lauren Quin earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015 and graduated with an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019. She is well known for her ability to capture the frenzy of our contemporary digital age through the techniques of painting. With their densely layered surfaces and the dynamism of their lines, Quin’s paintings simultaneously respond to and reject the increasing digitization of our collective visual rhetoric. Though Quin’s paintings radiate with a prismatic fluorescence like neon lights or digital collage, her process is surprisingly and persistently analogue as it harnesses the medium of painting as a technology in its own right.
To realize the rippling effect and electric glow characteristic of her paintings, Quin carves, etches, and imprints drawings into the canvas with tools that range from medical spoons to X-Acto knives, building layers that multiply and superimpose into a visual mirage that ultimately animates the surface with polychromatic vibrancy. Quin describes her methodical practice as fundamentally self-taught and credits her formative artistic education to her untrained father, who taught her the basics of painting as he worked alongside her in the basement of her childhood home throughout her youth.
The 28-year-old artist has captivated both international museums and galleries with her magnetizing paintings, some of which were recently acquired by institutions such as the ICA Miami and X Museum, Beijing, and have been shown in exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. A stand-out piece from Quin’s recent 2021 solo exhibition at Stockholm’s Loyal Gallery, A Leaf is an Arrow transfixes the viewer as it pulsates with the frenetic energy that reverberates throughout her entire oeuvre.