Exhibitions, Italy, Roma, 21 May 2013
Jamie Felton
ABSTRACTION AND FREEDOM
Vernissage May 21th 2013
7 pm
Finissage June 11th
The multiple artistic languages of Jamie Felton amount to a wildly free
experimental abstraction. In her first solo exhibition in Rome, at the
Ecos Gallery, she shows a series of works (from sculpture to video to a
group of paintings) that fascinate because of their boldly investigative
nature. Part of the strong visual effect is due to a mix of unexpected materials
such as plaster of Paris, sand, wood, fabric, glue, and oil paint in
a spontaneous, nearly impulsive, search to explore human relationships
and emotions. The painting Hold (2012) seems at first to employ a simple
illusionary space teased forth by dense brushwork in the manner of gestural
abstraction familiar since the mid-twentieth century. Further looking
reveals instead the artist’s more specific and personal intention: the
work is made of two canvases bound together by gobs of plaster and a
bandage of canvas salvaged from a discarded painting, and a kind of pathos
emerges from this cobbled-together marriage between two similar
bodies. All her Rome paintings (2011–12) benefit from a shared genetic
history. In her restless search for a result that corresponds to inner feelings,
Felton continually mutilates her paintings, dismembering them and
re-combining their parts, attaching foreign elements, bits of painted
canvas to sculptures and vice-versa. Intolerant of repetitive solutions,
Felton doesn’t hesitate to remove a canvas from a stretcher and create a
three-dimensional object. Her work makes visible her uneasy questioning
as to the nature of an image, and how one image can lead to another,
and finally to something never before seen.
Since 2012 Jamie Felton has concentrated on investigating color, often
linking her work to the natural phenomena of rainbows and sunsets, as in
the sculptures Sunset Blocks and Stolen Rainbow, in the video Trying to find
the Color of the Sunset Through a Single Kiss, and in all her paintings. She
says, “Sunset Blocks consists in four plaster blocks placed vertically on
glass shelves. The setting of the sun is an event that happens every day,
slipping by for a brief time. I am trying to archive time by preserving the
colors of the sunset in these plaster blocks. The sunset colors are fleeting:
ultramarine blue fills the night sky and leaves stillness in the dark.
We are left contemplating the colors of the moment we have just seen.”
When the artist left Rome in the spring of 2012, she realized that
she wanted to concentrate on color and on painting. Her experience in
Rome had immersed her in new tonalities that she wanted to explore.
Pool Scene, There are Two Kinds of Tears and Sling all show her bold new
palette, along with her increased concision and confidence.
by Pia Candinas
ABSTRACTION AND FREEDOM
Vernissage May 21th 2013
7 pm
Finissage June 11th
The multiple artistic languages of Jamie Felton amount to a wildly free
experimental abstraction. In her first solo exhibition in Rome, at the
Ecos Gallery, she shows a series of works (from sculpture to video to a
group of paintings) that fascinate because of their boldly investigative
nature. Part of the strong visual effect is due to a mix of unexpected materials
such as plaster of Paris, sand, wood, fabric, glue, and oil paint in
a spontaneous, nearly impulsive, search to explore human relationships
and emotions. The painting Hold (2012) seems at first to employ a simple
illusionary space teased forth by dense brushwork in the manner of gestural
abstraction familiar since the mid-twentieth century. Further looking
reveals instead the artist’s more specific and personal intention: the
work is made of two canvases bound together by gobs of plaster and a
bandage of canvas salvaged from a discarded painting, and a kind of pathos
emerges from this cobbled-together marriage between two similar
bodies. All her Rome paintings (2011–12) benefit from a shared genetic
history. In her restless search for a result that corresponds to inner feelings,
Felton continually mutilates her paintings, dismembering them and
re-combining their parts, attaching foreign elements, bits of painted
canvas to sculptures and vice-versa. Intolerant of repetitive solutions,
Felton doesn’t hesitate to remove a canvas from a stretcher and create a
three-dimensional object. Her work makes visible her uneasy questioning
as to the nature of an image, and how one image can lead to another,
and finally to something never before seen.
Since 2012 Jamie Felton has concentrated on investigating color, often
linking her work to the natural phenomena of rainbows and sunsets, as in
the sculptures Sunset Blocks and Stolen Rainbow, in the video Trying to find
the Color of the Sunset Through a Single Kiss, and in all her paintings. She
says, “Sunset Blocks consists in four plaster blocks placed vertically on
glass shelves. The setting of the sun is an event that happens every day,
slipping by for a brief time. I am trying to archive time by preserving the
colors of the sunset in these plaster blocks. The sunset colors are fleeting:
ultramarine blue fills the night sky and leaves stillness in the dark.
We are left contemplating the colors of the moment we have just seen.”
When the artist left Rome in the spring of 2012, she realized that
she wanted to concentrate on color and on painting. Her experience in
Rome had immersed her in new tonalities that she wanted to explore.
Pool Scene, There are Two Kinds of Tears and Sling all show her bold new
palette, along with her increased concision and confidence.
by Pia Candinas
Comments 0
Say something