Eve Fowler

Eve Fowler's "the difference is spreading," 2015, installation view photograph by Lee Thompson

Crass ex-pat poet Gertrude Stein has always been known for her progressive associations: her mentorship of Hemingway, her support of Picasso and Matisse, her Paris salons. So it’s fitting that Eve Fowler, an L.A. artist who has been showing the work of other artists in her East Hollywood home and elsewhere for the past few years, would be drawn to Stein. But Fowler’s progressive community is less male and modernist, more fluid in its thinking about gender and power than Stein’s. It’s interesting how well Stein’s words, which fill Fowler’s current show at newly opened Meir Gallery, translate to this newer context. “The difference is spreading,” says a neon sign you see when you enter the gallery. Then text paintings, posters and collages overlay vinyl text about the “feeling of words” that wraps around the gallery’s walls. “Rub her coke,” say brass letters embedded into a gorgeous black walnut disc laid on the floor.