“Jeff Lowe’s sculpture and drawings speak the universal language of sculpture”
WILLIAM TUCKER
Internationally acclaimed sculptor Jeff Lowe presents new sculpture and works on paper in his first solo exhibition at Pangolin London.

Jeff Lowe was a student of ‘The New Generation’ of British sculptor’s that emerged in the 1960’s. Studying at the Saint Martin’s School of Art between 1971-75, under the esteemed tutelage of William Tucker, Philip King and Anthony Caro: Lowe inherited the New Generation’s experimentation of industrial materials, along with an interest in releasing the sculpture from the confines of the plinth so that it could inhabit the viewer’s personal space.

Born in Lancashire in 1952 Jeff Lowe came to prominence at the age of 21, whilst still a student at Saint Martin’s, through his first solo exhibition at the prestigious Leicester Galleries in London’s Cork Street in 1974. He then went on to represent Britain at the Paris Biennale, and his work featured in a number of important group shows at the Hayward Gallery, Arts Council, British Council, Serpentine Gallery and Ikon Gallery throughout the latter half of the 1970’s.

In the 1980’s Lowe’s works marked a departure in steel sculpture, eschewing the previous methods of welding cast bars of steel or creating assemblages of found objects he instead bought mis-cast pieces of steel that had distorted in the casting process, welding them into abstract configurations before cutting these large steel bundles into different parts.

His subsequent monumental sculpture of the 1990’s more clearly reveals the artist’s interest in the architectural. Initially weighty works, impactful in their mass, Lowe’s more recent sculpture has shed it’s bulk to reveal it’s armature. These large scale works do not imply a narrative, neither fictional or mythological, nor is it rooted in a contemporaneous commentary: they are constructions and at their core remain architectural in spirit.

This exhibition aims to explore Lowe’s prolific and experimental output over the past four decades and it’s enduring integrity.

“By their own weight and presence, Lowe’s sculptures oblige us to consider the strength of the floor or the wall that supports them, the space that surrounds them and the fall of light through windows and doors which facilitate our experience of them”.
ERIC MOODY