Eileen Cowin retrospective opens at LACMA

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened ‘Between Panic and Paradise,’ a retrospective exhibition exploring nearly six decades of work by artist Eileen Cowin. The installation eschews a traditional chronological layout, instead oscillating between different periods of her career to reflect her philosophy that time is experienced as episodic and fragmented rather than linear.

The exhibition features a range of media, including recent large-scale color photographs, new video work, and early photographic transparencies utilizing magazine transfers from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cowin, who settled in Los Angeles in 1975, is noted for her staged photography and her ability to apply technical methods to complex, ‘crooked’ storylines.

Her influential work includes the ‘Family Docudrama’ series (1980-84), which utilized choreographed scenes involving her own family to explore tense, suggestive narratives.