Stela

Trained at the Glasgow School of Art and other institutions, Camilla Løw uses materials such as concrete, plastic, wood, and metal to create highly distinctive sculptures based on simplified forms and techniques. Geometric shapes such as cubes, circles, and grids are pieced together without any screws, glue, welding, or other forms of adhesion, but rather through stacking or being bound together with ropes. Løw’s works are abstract and also borrow elements from modernist movements in design, constructivism, and minimalism.

The sculpture Stela consists of five concrete cubes stacked on top of one another. Together they create a square pillar that stands 150 cm tall (4’ 11”), a height that relates it to the human body. Some of the surfaces have been painted blue, black, red, or yellow, while the rest appear as untreated, grey concrete. The word stela, from Greek, means “pillar” or “upright slab” and refers to a type of funerary monument used in antiquity. Within the history of sculpture, the stela can be described as a vertical monument in its simplest form. In her reductive process, Løw has stripped Stela of everything that can be related to a monument, thereby reducing the sculpture to an abstract form. The material use and construction here typify Løw’s works, and Stela can be seen as representing the basic form and fundament of her art.