Jean Lowe, “Spoiler Alert”

by Liz Goldner

Unveil Gallery, Irvine, California

Continuing to May 30, 2025

Jean Lowe, “Planned Community,” 2004, oil on unstretched canvas, 120 x 170”. All images courtesy of the artist and Unveil Gallery, Irvine.

In an era when reality is often contradicted by the words and actions by our so-called leaders, Jean Lowe’s “Spoiler Alert,” with its papier-mâché potted plants, books and even a fire extinguisher becomes the perfect show and tell.

Lowe grew up in the Bay Area with the freedom to explore a multitude of artistic endeavors, including sneaking into the empty Varsity Theater in downtown Palo Alta to mount improvised performances. She was also influenced by her father, a psychiatrist who, Lowe says, inspired her “to look around the back sides of issues or accepted norms.” When she told her dad that she was majoring in art at UC Berkeley, he said, “Oh darling, what for?” Her response was, “How do I make art in a way that’s not purely self-indulgent?”

Jean Lowe, “POW Carpet,” 2020, housepaint on canvas, 154 x 83”.

In graduate school at UC San Diego, Lowe began exploring in her artwork “important issues.” These included “relationships with other species,” environmental concerns, hypocrisy, and pretension. As a working artist, “I’ve explored the same material consistently but from constantly shifting angles and with different formal approaches,” she explains. Self-described as a “conceptual/decorative multimedia” artist, in “Spoiler Alert” her figurative talents are on display in paintings, sculptures, and installations.

Jean Lowe, “Bouquet in Shallow Basket,” 2024, casein enamel on papier-mache, 14 x 18 x 14”.

One important aspect of Lowe’s work is her anti-Eurocentric perspective. She challenges centuries-old norms of how White people and their environs were depicted. The 10-foot wide “Planned Community” (2004) is a parody of 17th century Dutch landscape paintings. Rather than depicting windmills and other traditionally European scenes, she portrays our industrial expansion and suburban sprawl. That sprawl takes place beneath the kind of vast, luminous sky often seen in those Dutch antecedents.

Jean Lowe, “Self Help (Rekindling Your Passion),” 2016, casein, ink-jet print on polymetal, 54 x 37 1/2”.

Lowe’s red, blue, and yellow painting “POW Carpet” (2020) was inspired by decorative rugs she has seen in auction catalogs. A closer look reveals that its intricate design is created with numerous abstract images, which usurp our expectations of what a rug should look like. The viewer is also invited to walk on the painted rug, an action that would ordinarily be an act of aesthetic blasphemy.

The apparently realistic “Bouquet in Shallow Basket” (2024) is made of papier- mâché, one of Lowe’s favorite creative mediums. Each of her two colorful 2025 “Nature Morte” florals (appropriating traditional paintings) are painted with casein on paper that is besmirched by its accompaniment with 100-plus years old newspaper clippings. They are titled “Swede Fleeing Fire” and “Bear Attack.”

The pieces de resistance here are several papier-mâché books, each satirizing the ever-popular genre of self-help books. Several are humorously titled, “Rekindling Your Passion for … What Could Have Been, Meaningless Sex, Fatty Foods, Personal Growth, Perseverance and Polite Conversation.” Several others are titled, “Happiness is … A Nipple, A Cupcake, A Car, Family and a White Picket Fence, Second Chance and The Moment.” The point is that artmaking, when poking fun at our insecurities, can elevate us to a higher understanding of ourselves and our place in the world — and do so far more than the self-help books they parody.

Jean Lowe, ”Small Fire Extinguisher,” 2022, casein on papier maché, 7 x 16 x 3 1/2”.

Lowe’s three-dimensional papier-mâché fire extinguisher is so realistic that we might easily pass it by. But look closely and it is covered with squiggly drawings and ersatz writings, mocking the instructions on a real fire extinguisher. The artwork thus becomes a metaphor for the message of overall protection of Constitutional rights by our government, especially while so many protective safeguards, from health agencies, to protection of our food and air, to surveillance of foreign threats are being dismantled.

Few recent art shows have so cleverly succeeded in deconstructing the paradigms of our current politics. “Spoiler Alert” not only entertains and delights, but it also offers a serious response to the brazen lies and corruption being committed in broad daylight.

Liz Goldner is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009. 

Liz Goldner’s Website.