Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, “Blue Moons," a solo exhibition of new paintings-on-paper by Jackie Gendel. Jackie Gendel's recent works present female figures in colorful and patterned surroundings often emerging from - and morphing into - the picture-spaces in which they are situated.
Full of power, mystery, energy and verve, Jackie Gendel's paintings-on-paper activate both past and present, drawing on art history and a range of contemporary sources such as the feminist zines for which Gendel herself drew in the late 1990s. In a recent talk at the Jewish Museum, Jackie Gendel discussed her work in the context of the early 20th-century Vienna Workshop - a movement keenly aware of the relation between art and modern life - and the various ways in which art helps us think about and understand the world and what we want for it.
Working with an eye towards women's historical roles as both art-subject and art-maker, Jackie Gendel places her figures in dynamic pictorial spaces for narrative and compositional effect. One recent piece, "The Ascendents," features a group of women navigating a seemingly endless staircase figured in color blocks and shifting linear brushwork. Another piece, "Chromo-Genesis," features an evolution of the female form in motion right to left across the picture plane as if set down in Hebrew.
At the beginning of the 21st-century, a moment at which individual interiority is paramount, Jackie Gendel explores the colors, shapes, lines and textures of picture-making, shaping delicate images in a range of scenarios and possibilities. Vienna Workshop artists and their early 20th-century peers like Hannah Hoch or Sophie Tauber-Arp considered art and expression essential tools for living into modern life and its complexities. In her work, Jackie Gendel produces images that consider and subvert expectations, forge unique paths and shape new realities.
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’s work has been the subject of recent solo and group exhibitions at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Inman Gallery (Houston, TX); SOCO Gallery (Charlotte, NC); and Thomas Erben Gallery (New York, NY). Gendel’s work is included in the collections of Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT); and Progressive Collection (Mayfield Village, OH). Gendel 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’s early work derived from her background in underground comics, a medium of “sequential image” storytelling, which she drew in the late ’90s for an upstart feminist webzine for teenage girls. Gendel lives and works in Providence, RI.
Jackie Gendel “Blue Moons” is online September 16-30, 2026. All works can be viewed at the gallery by appointment.
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.
