The Happy Lion is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Monique van Genderen.   Following her 2005 show titled My Watercolor Story, for her third show at The Happy Lion van Genderen’s paintings are decidedly floral. We could call it her flower story. Still abstract these paintings use the familiar reference of the flower in their language of shapes. Rather than act as representational elements in the pictoral ground the flower becomes a reference. Like Andy Warhol’s the Flower from 1964, these paintings depict flowers that are sometimes graphical and often like stick figure versions of their natural counterpart.  These are paintings made with graphic techniques and expressionistic experiments with rollers. In addition, the artist has designed is a bench, not only to bear books made by the artist but also for prolonged enjoyment of the work. 

Monique van Genderen is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego and received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts.  She is an internationally exhibited artist who has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions.  Last year she was commissioned to complete a large wall piece for the re-opening of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio and was featured in a solo show at the Hammer Museum.  In fall 2006 van Genderen had a solo exhibition in Brussels at Galerie Catherine Bastide and at the Savannah College of Art and Design and last month she completed a large wall installation at the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington.  She is the recipient of many awards, among them an Artist in Residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.  Her work is included in private and public collections including the Altoids Collection and The Norton Family Foundation.  The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.