The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art (LRMA) has organized and is proud to present the special exhibition Louisa Chase: What Lies Beneath, a celebration of one of the most powerful female voices in contemporary art. Featuring more than thirty-five paintings, prints, and studies, this is one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of Louisa Chase's work to be shown in the Southeastern United States. This overview of her forty-year career includes signature works that defined her vision and solidified her presence as a force to be reckoned with in the contemporary art world.

A master of expressive line, color and texture, Chase reveled in the physicality of painting and printmaking as she confronted her innermost desires to render emotional, interior landscapes that knew no boundaries. Existing in that internal state of being, she harnessed a duality that was constantly in flux and embattled with itself. Peeling away the layers of “what lies beneath,” she reveals the mysterious inner-workings of the human psyche through a visual language of expressive marks and symbolic imagery that is universal, yet deeply personal—a style she described as “kamikaze curiosity.” Striking a balance between order and chaos, her bold, outwardly raw expression, manifested in thickly-applied layers of paint, wax and carved gestural marks, is an excavation of the soul.

Emerging out of male-dominated art movements such as Minimalism and Conceptual Art in the late 1970s, Chase is often linked to Neo-Expressionism and the New Image painters. This resurgence in painting employed heavy impasto, mark-making, figurative symbolism and color. In the 1980s, women artists were still generally marginalized but she was one of the few to gain recognition, along with Susan Rothenberg and Elizabeth Murray. With her feet firmly planted in the contemporary New York art scene alongside notable artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Salle, Julian Schnabel and Donald Sultan, and represented by the foremost galleries in New York, Chase had developed a voice that was uniquely her own. Her prints and paintings were featured in landmark exhibitions that set the tone for contemporary art of that era such as American Painting: The Eighties at Grey Art Gallery, New York University, in 1979, and Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained: American Visions of the New Decade, organized by the New Museum of Contemporary Art to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1984. That same year, the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston organized the nationally-traveled exhibition New Currents: Louisa Chase.

Major museums have collected Chase’s work including the Whitney Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and many more.

Louisa Chase: What Lies Beneath is made possible by the generous support of Jim Sweeny in memory of his wife, Martha. The Sweenys’ support has enabled LRMA to do extensive primary research on Chase and to collaborate with the artist’s estate, galleries in New York and Maryland, and museums throughout Florida. We extend our sincere appreciation to all who have contributed to this special exhibition and continue to champion Louisa Chase’s work to preserve her legacy as a true visionary.