April 2021
April 2020
March 2020
March 27, 2020
Mimi Lauter (b. 1982, San Francisco, CA) is a Los Angeles-based artist whose oil and soft-pastel works on paper assemble abstracted narratives drawn from subconscious memory, literature, sociopolitical surroundings, and classical mythology. For her first exhibition at Blum & Poe Los Angeles in 2018, Lauter presented a twenty-four part installation entitled Sensus Oxynation that functioned as the interior of a chapel—each wall a grouping of lush, highly chromatic works. Her practice proposes a secular relationship to spirituality in painting—belief in and devotion to the painting itself. Imagery of flowers, vases, the four elements, and other instances of iconography are meant to conjure the history of painting. A number of works point to the tradition of still lifes, implicating interior and psychological spaces. Lauter is informed and influenced by artists such as Odilon Redon, Jean-Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard as well as other members of the Nabis and Post-Impressionists, who impress upon the aesthetic foundation of her work.
In 2012, Lauter was included in the first Los Angeles Biennial Made in L.A. 2012 organized by the Hammer Museum in collaboration with LAXART. In 2021, Lauter will participate in Prospect.5 New Orleans, LA. Lauter received her BA at the University of California, Los Angeles and her MFA from University of California, Irvine. Her work is represented in the collections of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA.