JACKIE GENDEL – COMEDY OF MANNERS
2012-10-22Much of Gendel’s recent work makes contradictory use of two of modernity’s most common conventions of image production; she employs both serial repetition of form and the sequential image of narrative, using them simultaneously to unfold the implied relationship between narrative time and painterly process. This achieves a “Groundhog Day”- like effect in which a scene repeats albeit in slightly altered scenery, and increasingly nuanced but appreciable differences occur in the who, what, when, how, and ultimately, most importantly, “why”.
This peculiar take on the incremental space within and between paintings provides an unlikely connection between Gendel’s recent work and her 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.
But her recent work is also equally established in her approach to easel painting, and specifically her play with the notion of character and historical time developed throughout her first exhibition of speculative portraits at the gallery in 2006, which the artist credits as an important turning point in her work, and has continued in various iterations since.
Exhibition runs through to November 10th, 2012
Jeff Bailey Gallery
625 W 27th St – Ground Floor
11th & 12 Ave
New York
NY
10001
