Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, “Webs,” a solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Pamela Jorden. In Jorden’s work, shape - often defined by the perimeter of the painting itself - informs one’s experience of painterly color, sinuous line and rich atmosphere.
Pamela Jorden’s practice begins with a shaped support over which she stretches raw Belgian linen. The shaped support works as an initial element against which Jorden considers the next step of her process - applying dynamic passages of color in directed, poured flows. “Each pour is its own thing,” Jorden notes. She then works with an array of tools to bring out the different elements of the work. One piece in the exhibition, “Heavy Air,” presents a triangle of color - brushed and then lifted with a paper towel - with shapes poured up to its edges. Another work, “Shift” features a variety of spaces - some dense, some more open - into all of which color is brushed, scraped and wiped.
“The idea of a web is a nice way to think about this group of paintings,” Pamela Jorden writes. “The complexity one sees in the idiosyncratic geometry and patterning of a web is both free-formed and structured. It is dependent on a range of conditions.” This finds a parallel in Jorden’s work, in which chance operates within context as determined by her set-up and attitude. Pamela Jorden usually begins her paintings flat, and then, over the course of multiple days of working, the elements start to come together. “The materiality of the paint condenses like sedimentation, or disperses into atmosphere,” Jorden writes.
Pamela Jorden’s work allows for associations between making and viewing, opening up possibilities for consideration and contemplation. “These paintings are experiments with form, color, material processes where the shape of the frame simultaneously holds atmospheric space and asserts mass and physicality. The layered density, and material build-up, is a way for me to think about time in the painting. Within the oval diptychs, the two halves bring together two unique spaces or perspectives experienced at once. The ruptures and unexpected connections are odd synchronizations that, for me, interlace the movement of expansion and contraction. I think about color as related to the physical experience of sound and texture; also, an embodiment of mass and weight. Color is actively affecting, destabilizing, directing. These paintings are improvisations and propositions for possible relationships.”
Pamela JORDEN (b. 1969, Knoxville, TN) received a BFA from the University of Tennessee (Knoxville, TN) in 1992 and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) in 1996. Pamela Jorden’s work is the subject of “Light Falls,” a new book published by Philip Martin Gallery. Recent museum shows include Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI); Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (Birmingham, AL); University of Redlands Art Gallery (Redlands, CA); Pizzuti Collection (Columbus, OH); and Mason Gross Art Gallery at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ). Recent solo and group gallery exhibitions include Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York, NY); Romer Young Gallery (San Francisco, CA); Brennan & Griffin (New York, NY); and Seterah Gallery (Düsseldorf, Germany). Pamela Jorden’s work is included in the collections of Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts/University of Alabama at Birmingham (Birmingham, AL); Columbus Museum of Art/Pizzuti Collection (Columbus, OH); Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, University of Tennessee (Knoxville, TN); Fidelity Collection (Boston, MA); Massachusetts Intitute of Technology List Museum (Boston, MA); New York-Presbyterian Hospital (New York, NY); Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI). Jorden’s work has been written about in numerous publications such as Artforum, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and Art in America. Jorden lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Pamela Jordens’s exhibition, “Webs,” is online May 7 - 21, 2026. The works are available to view at the gallery.
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 and information please call 323-507-2037 or email info@philipmartingallery.com.
