Lilah Fowler’s new show at Brown Gallery in London continues a line of exploration that has preoccupied artists in the second half of the 20th century: the presence of geometry in our lives. With visual influences ranging from Tony Smith’s sculptures to Sol LeWitt’s drawings to Fred Sandback’s string installations, Fowler would seem to be putting herself into a minimalist corner.
But the work seems too playful, too chaotic to be a simple assemblage of references. The work plays much more directly with a visitor’s experience of the pieces, through explosive reflections and geometric coincidences that cause well-known plays of perspective. But the work never falls into geometric order, or the implication of gemoetric order. It is as if the order of rationality has broken down, if only under the weight of all the rhomboids and parabolic surfaces put into play. Complex geometry never had so much fun.
Designer: Lilah Fowler
