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Roy Dowell
May 21st – July 16th


the Landing is pleased to present an exhibition of the work of Roy Dowell. This exhibition will run from May 21 to July 2, 2022. There will be a reception for the artist from 5:00 to 7:00 pm on Saturday May 21st.

Dowell will be presenting a group of acrylic paintings on linen accompanied by a small group of framed works on paper all created over the last two years. This work is informed by his strong and ongoing interest in world cultures, and in the history of modern and contemporary art and design. His need, and the awareness of humanity's need, to create, decorate and invent a personal language based on an extensive knowledge of signs, symbols, formal concerns and a broad selection of diverse references drives his work. His multi-layered images present a personalized language founded in the utilitarian, quotidian and functional. Both quirky and seemingly familiar his paintings present an individualized world of complex compositions that utilize representational elements, abstraction, with elements of surrealism, humor and with a stubborn insistence. His work invites the viewer to locate themselves in it and to decipher and decode it.

Dowell's paintings, collages, sculptures and mosaics have been shown over the last 45 years in numerous one person and group gallery exhibitions both nationally and internationally. His work is in many private collections and in the collections of numerous museums and foundations including: the Collections of LACMA, The HAMMER Museum, MOCA, SFMOMA, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, The Berkeley Art Museum, The Oakland Museum, The Jumex Collection in Mexico City and many others. Recently Dowell has had a one person exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York and had his work included in the exhibition, "Abstracted Vocabularies" at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art.

Dowell lives in Los Angeles. He was the founding Chair of the Graduate Fine Arts Program at the Otis College of Art and Design. He held that post from 1990 until 2018 and is now a Professor Emeritus at the college.

Roy Dowell (b. 1951, Bronxville, NY) received his Master of Fine Arts and his Bachelor of Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA and studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA.

Recent solo exhibitions include Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; “Found in Translation,” Bolsky Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA; “Some of Me and the Sum of Others,” as-is.la, Los Angeles, CA; 1969 Gallery, New York, NY; “Roy Dowell: Mosaics,” Tif Sigfrids Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; “Little Tree,” Proxy Paris @ Galerie Ygrec, Paris, France; “Roy Dowell: New Work,” James Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA; “Roy Dowell, New Work,” Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York, NY; James Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA; Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA; Proxy Gallery, Culver City, CA; “Roy Dowell: Speaking in Tongues,” Galería Nina Menocal, Mexico City, Mexico; Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York; “Roy Dowell: New Works on Paper,” Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; “Roy Dowell: A Survey Exhibition 1981-2005,” Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; “Roy Dowell: New Works,” Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; “Roy Dowell: New Works,” Finesilver Gallery, San Antonio, TX; “Roy Dowell: like love, built on precedent,” Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Curt Marcus Gallery, New York, NY, and Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.

Recent group exhibitions include “Abstracted Vocabularies,” Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; “FEEDBACK” (curated by Helen Molesworth), Jack Shainman Gallery: The School, Kinderhook, NY; “Constellations,” Lennon, Weinberg Inc., New York, NY; “The American Academy Invitational Exhibition of Visual Art,” American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; “Make/Work” (curated by Jenene Nagy), Los Angeles Valley College, Van Nuys, CA; “Vision Valley” (curated by Adam Miller), Brand Library & Art Center, Glendale, CA; “Synchronicity: a State of Painting,” Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York, NY; “Memory Theater” (curated by Srijon Chowdhury), Upfor Gallery, Portland, OR; “A Few Days,” Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York, NY; “Salon du Dessin,” Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York, NY; “Death Ship” (curated by Adam Miller and Devon Oder), The Pit, Glendale, CA; “Floor Flowers” (curated by David Pagel), Claremont Graduate University Gallery, Claremont, CA; “A Poem to Raoul and Agnes” (curated by Sherman Sam), Ancient & Modern, London, United Kingdom; “Left Coast: Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art,” Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; “California Visual Music” (curated by Marcus Herse), Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Los Angeles, CA; “Local Fish,” Ernie Wolff Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; “Roy Dowell and Alexander Kroll,” Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL; “Split Realities,” Nan Rae Gallery, Woodbury University, Los Angeles, CA; “Made in LA 2012: Los Angeles Biennial,” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; “Arctic Summer,” Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and “Viva La Raspberries” (curated by Evan Holloway), Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York, NY.

His work is included the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum, Logan, UT; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; Phoenix Museum of Art, Phoenix, AZ; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC.

Dowell lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.