30.5 x 21 cm
Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, "Full Moon Repeat," an exhibition of new paintings-on-paper by Jackie Gendel. Working with an eye towards both art history and contemporary visual culture, Jackie Gendel's pictures address depictions of the female figure while at the same time exploring pattern, collage-space and color.
“I try to get to a place that is unexpected to me," Jackie Gendel writes. The loose, interpretative feeling of Gendel's paintings harkens to those of major Modernists like Sophie Delaunay, Hannah Höch, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Liubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova. These artists rejected not only the masculine markings of Modernism, but also certain assumed hierarchical distinctions between design and fine arts that existed at the time.
“I paint people because the process of painting a portrait is similar to identity formation...the materials, the spills, the language, tells me who this person is becoming.” Gendel's direct mark-making plays off the subtle atmospheres she creates, back-stopping her gestured brushwork with flows of liquid color. “I keep on painting the heads and faces over and over again until they get to a place that feels resolved and poignant and mysterious.” Gendel’s figures gather, dance, talk and recline in gardens, theaters and drawing rooms: sometimes the bodies are faceless; in other works, the expressions themselves convey the atmosphere.
Gendel notes that the people in her paintings are “in different states of awareness.” Individual figures in Gendel's work play off groupings; people exist in pictorial spaces, drawn as if pulled through dance or theatrical design. Much of Jackie Gendel's recent work makes contradictory use of two of modernity’s most common conventions of image production: serial repetition of form and the sequential image of narrative. Gendel employs both, using them simultaneously to unfold the implied relationship between narrative time and painterly process. It can take time to differentiate between person and pattern. This visual uncertainty emphasizes the narrative playfulness and mystery behind the women in Gendel's work.
Embracing a fluid approach in her paintings, Gendel has commented how she develops “scenes, characters and situations through deliberate figuration, intuitive mark making, color and chance procedures,” often painting over works, or creating the same image in different colors and sizes to subvert the singular image. “They’re still figures of women, but they’re also shapes moving. It makes you think about the shift to abstraction.”
Jackie Gendel (b. 1973, Houston, TX) received a BA from Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, MO) and an MFA from Yale University (New Haven, CT). Jackie Gendel was featured in the exhibition, "Pocket Universe" (Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA). Her work has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at Inman Gallery (Houston, TX); SOCO Gallery (Charlotte, NC); Thomas Erben Gallery (New York, NY); Pratt Manhattan Gallery (New York, NY); Jeff Bailey Gallery (Hudson, NY); and Loyal Gallery (Malmö, Sweden). Gendel’s work is included in the collections of Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT); and the Progressive Collection (Mayfield Village, OH). Her work has been featured in publications such as Artforum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Modern Painters, and Art Papers. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her an Academy Award in 2007. She participated in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program in 2010 and was an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony in 2005. Gendel lives and works in Providence, RI.
"Full Moon Repeat" is online February 14 - March 2, 2024.
Philip Martin Gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday 11-5 and Tuesdays by appointment. The gallery is located at 3342 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles CA 90065.
For additional images or information, please call 323-507-2037, or email info@philipmartingallery.com.
