DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
Jenny He, a senior at Miss Porter's School, is currently taking a Post-AP independent course with a concentration on her combined 3D and 2D installation. She works in various mediums including oils, acrylics, casein, watercolor, clay and digital.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
Your Name
Here
Put some information about yourself here. This could be an informal "cover letter" for anyone who looks at your portfolio. You could talk about where you were born, where you went to school, and what your goals are.
Put some information about yourself here. This could be an informal "cover letter" for anyone who looks at your portfolio. You could talk about where you were born, where you went to school, and what your goals are.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
1. Grier Torrence
Here in the Donaldson Gallery in the Olin Arts and Science Center is a show, an installation with the title Intrusion. The work scans a wide range of media including a large-scale pencil drawing, several "traditional" oil paintings on canvas/linen, and three paintings on wood panel. Of the latter, one incorporates plaster, another cardboard with cutouts, and still another is strictly oil on birch plywood. And there is painting on canvas paper.
Then there are the sculptures. Some are made of plastic wrap and tape, others of clay, newspaper, and plaster in gauze. And these are often displayed with an accompanying drawing or painting, a sort of disjoined background. One of the plaster sculptures is mounted in such a way that it plays off of both walls, straddling a corner. The large drawing is displayed curving around a corner too. Near the early painting, a selfportrait done in values of raw umber, are some appropriated studio objects and canvases turned to the wall or half-seen. The great array of media in the installation, seen as a whole, successfully becomes one statement. The installation has a sense of continuity and an integrated message.
The title, Intrusion brings to mind a sense of alienation, bombardment, or discord. It could imply a feeling of displacement, perhaps referring to her Scream painting which incorporates a silhouette of the map of China. Breaking out of an egg, the arriving self cries as in a rebirth in a new continent. Much of the work seems to address a sense of arrival or emergence. The self-portrait which is central to the exhibition, the first work one sees upon entering the gallery, is a self-portrait that seems to extend its arm and hand as in a conventional greeting as if to say, "Hello, my name is Jenny He." The artist's name above the painting enhances this reading.
While this is a forward gesture, the expression of the beautfully painted face (painted over an earlier portrait of Ellen) and most of the other work seem to be about an introspective process. A poetic kind of self portraiture weather assessing relationships or figuring out one's own identity seems to prevail and permeate the exhibition. The large portrait of the artist's mother is one that seems to ask about how the artist relates to this colossal presence in her life. It is a painting that began with an interest in planes (as in Cezanne) and seemed to consider aspects (or facets) of the mother's personality.
These are ideationally rich works of art to contemplate. Present as well is a technical ability evident in each work. The facility for painting has long been established in Jenny's work. The Renaissance kind of technique she can apply to a painting (such as the Sir Henry Raeburn study) or the opaque palette knife bravura (as in the portrait of her mother) are all in clear evidence. But what is maybe easy to miss is Jenny's gigantic achievement of mastering media entirely new to her. She researched extensively ways that she could work in three dimensions and came up with the plastic wrap/shipping tape way of working. The more conventional clay, plaster, and newspaper construction techniques were readily acquired as well.
Jenny's mentor research includes much inquiry into the work of Kiki Smith, Antonio López García, Jasper Johns, Giocometti, and Marisol. In acclimating to a new (especially a two and three-dimensional) culture and new artistic venue, Jenny exhibits a willingness to let go of what she already does well and a courage to take on the unknown. She has faith in a new direction devoted to her inspiration. (This has not been without times of deep introspection and doubt and a search for both literal and figurative space).
The work in Jenny's show has a distinctly contemporary feeling. In posting this comment, I look across the many rows of images on Jenny's digitation site and am reminded of the extensive history of Jenny's work over the last four years. The early paintings dealt with childhood memories of China. They were supplemented by the imaginative and playful watercolors, and then came the strong spatial/figurative oil paintings that led into the early multimedia works. There is tremendous evolution from one year to the next even from one season to the next.
04/26/15, 02:26 pm