Susan Jamison: Trust in Me
New paintings in egg tempera on panel
Courtney Jordan: Restructuring
New paintings and drawings on mylar
September 15 - October 20
Opening reception with artists: Saturday, September 15, 6-8 PM
Irvine Contemporary is delighted to present two new solo exhibitions:
Susan Jamison, Trust in Me, and Courtney Jordan, Restructuring.
Both exhibitions open Saturday, September 15 and extend through October
20. Opening reception with artists, Saturday, September 15, 6-8 PM.
Susan Jamison, Trust in Me
Susan Jamison, Trust
in Me,
2007. Egg tempera and ink transfer
on panel. 36 X 36 inches.
In Trust in Me, Susan Jamison’s
second solo exhibition at Irvine Contemporary, the artist presents
a new series of egg tempera paintings that extend her signature approach
to the female figure through provocative new imagery on dark tempera
grounds. Jamison uses large-scale panels to depict fantasy worlds that
appear both timeless and of our own moment. Jamison combines two classic
forms: the portrait, in a traditional Renaissance profile position,
and panels reminiscent of Audubon and naturalist illustration and Asian
art forms. The exquisitely rendered details in the paintings evoke
a magical realism that balances naturalism with strikingly original
allegories of the feminine.
Susan Jamison, Forget Me Not, 2007.
Egg tempera and ink transfer on panel. 36 X 36 inches.
Susan Jamison’s paintings read like vivid dream
states of the figures depicted in the com-positions: animals, insects,
birds, and objects of the women’s world like needles, thread, and
fabric, become symbolic projections of fantasies, fears, desires, and
sexual longing. Like Fairy Tales and Renaissance allegory paintings,
Jamison’s imagery captures
primal and archetypal emotions about the body, sexual identity, and human
relationships to the natural world.
The paintings engage our ideas of
exposure, touch, and vulnerability: the heads and faces of the figures,
each with eyes closed, are “exposed” for our viewing through
the use of early medical drawings of biological features of the human
head. This exposure of an underlying layer of the body is a metaphor
for disclosing the interior life of each female figure. The bodies of
the female figures are also nude but decorated with traditional henna
tattoo patterns that at once expose each figure and focus attention on
the organic and sensual surface of the body. The compositions invite
viewers into haunting imaginary spaces drawn from the artist’s
singular vision.
About the Artist
Susan Jamison has an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives
and works in Roanoke, VA.
Courtney Jordan, Restructuring
For Restructuring, Courtney Jordan, who
first exhibited with Irvine Contemporary in last year’s Introductions2 show,
presents a new series of drawings in ink and graphite on mylar that reconceive
architectural forms and structures from the human built environment.
Jordan’s subtle but complex works employ recognizable details of
built structures and urban industrial infrastructure that are encoded
with social and emotional values. Indeed, Jordan has created a new poetics
of architectural form.
Courtney Jordan, Module 1, 2007.
Ink and graphite on mylar. 14 X 18 inches.
Percy Shelley wrote in Defense of Poetry that
poetry “strips
the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare [its] naked and
sleeping beauty.” Poetry, he continues, “makes familiar objects
be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents.” Without
necessarily invoking Romantic transcendentalism, Jordan’s drawings
strip away the veil of familiarity from known structures to reveal our
deep emotional connectedness to the built forms of everyday life, in
which we live, move, and have our being. Jordan’s use of mylar
as a drawing surface allows her to create a sense of transparency with
overlapping planes of space that makes the familiar structures unfamiliar.
Her works compel us to rediscover the value of common architectural forms
and our sense of place in a complex over-built, industrialized, and structured
world.
Courtney Jordan, Tachyon, 2007.
Ink and graphite on mylar. 16 1/2 X 12 inches. Reminiscent of Julie Mehretu’s use of simul-taneously exploding
and converging urban spaces, architecture, and networks, Courtney Jordan
fragments multiple architectural and industrial forms into multiple planes
of space that seem to be propelled by the paradoxical energies of the
contemporary world. Her compositional elements also re-converge into
a new vision, a Restructuring, a new visual poetics of today’s
humanly built environment.
About the Artist
Courtney Jordan lives and works in Baltimore, MD. She has an MFA from
the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA from the Rhode Island
School of Design.
Exhibition
press release in printable pdf format
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