Lee Lozano — Drawings 1959–64, Karma, New York, 2021

Original exhibition poster. Karma, New York, 2021. 45.5 × 61 cm. Offset-printed on paper.

Condition: good; visible handling wear, soft creasing, light surface marks and minor edge and corner softness. Presents well.

Poster published for Lee Lozano: Drawings 1959–64, held at Karma, 22 East 2nd Street, New York, 12 July – 13 August 2021. The exhibition brought together two hundred works on paper and inaugurated Karma’s 22 East 2nd Street space. The poster carries one of Lozano’s early drawings beneath a large typographic title: LOZANO 1959–64. Image, date range, artist name, gallery address.

Lozano’s early works on paper are direct, charged and often unstable in tone: bodies, tools, erotic signs, social aggression, gender codes, humour and refusal already appear before the more formally recognised conceptual works. Karma’s accompanying publication framed these drawings as a critical six-year period in the development of her practice, with essays by Helen Molesworth and Tamar Garb.

A drawing from the moment before the Tool paintings, the Wave paintings, the Language Pieces, and the later acts of withdrawal is returned as a public announcement. The early sheet becomes exhibition image; the exhibition becomes poster; the poster keeps the work in circulation.