Laura Owens' Ambitious Wallpaper Installation at Wattis Institute Explores Painting's Boundaries

Laura Owens created a major installation titled "Ten Paintings" for the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco in 2016. The work covered all three walls of the main gallery with hand-made wallpaper, forming a single 16-by-150-foot painting that incorporated sound elements triggered by text messages. Owens described the project as one of the most ambitious of her career, deliberately moving away from traditional wallpaper's repeated patterns by producing it entirely in her studio. The installation's structure was based on the building's ceiling beams, which were incorporated trompe l'oeil into the design. Hidden within the walls were ten separate 9-by-7-foot paintings intended to be removed and exhibited independently in the future. Owens' exploration builds on previous experiments with audio components, including a 2014 painting for MoMA's "The Forever Now" exhibition that featured hidden speakers playing pop song clips. She also referenced a 2015 Berlin show at Capitain Petzel, where the gallery's lack of permanent walls led her to consider painting as architecture. The Wattis installation included a second gallery displaying Owens' paintings alongside embroideries by her grandmother Eileen Owens, questioning the boundaries of the medium. Owens discussed these ideas in a conversation with Anthony Huberman, tracing her ongoing investigation into what, where, and when a painting exists.