Andrew Jensdotter
Ecco Hominem
january 31 - march 9, 2020
PRESS RELEASE
Skye Gallery Aspen is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of new works by Andrew Jensdotter. Featuring paintings, drawings, sculpture and video, Ecco Hominem opens Friday, January 31 and will remain on view through March 9, 2020. An opening reception will be held on Friday, January 31 from 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. and an artist talk will be held on March 6 from 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.
With Ecco Hominem, Andrew Jensdotter presents a new body of work that signals a shift in his artistic approach. Splaying open the aesthetic experience, Jensdotter invites us into a myriad of materials, gestures and color intended to initiate a dialogue about our cultural context. Characterized by accumulation and energized by abundance, the work indulges desire.
Jensdotter first gained notoriety with his large-scale “carved paintings”—made through a refined and laborious process of layering painted images of a single subject sourced from google search. In an ongoing process of revealing and concealing, Jensdotter meticulously paints each image only to paint over it with the next. Repeating this process more than 100 times, he eventually takes a knife and carves away at the surface to expose residual fragments of the layers below. Once complete, we are presented with raw abstract color-fields. Yet beyond the surface of abstraction, a unique style of representation takes form as each layered image successively imprints itself within the densely packed tableaus, subtly revealing themselves from time to time like a whisper to the viewer.
In addition to a new series of carved paintings the multi-media exhibition brings his artistic practice to further dimensions. These latest works continue Jensdotter’s exploration of contemporary American culture, particularly his reckoning with the distillate tensions in a post-industrial consumer landscape. Carrying on the lineage of artists such as Jasper Johns, Jensdotter engages a vernacular of everyday life. Mass-produced goods and objects of muted familiarity—silk flowers, brooms, duct tape—are assembled into intricate compositions.
Brightly colored, supplely tactile and richly textured the work presents itself as something to be desired, something to own, something to buy. Indeed, it is all of these things and it is by design that we are lured into the consumer-trap—a natural instinct in the 21st century. Yet past the opulent exteriors, we find ourselves appreciating the everyday material—not for its ability to sweep up our mess or hold what we need together, instead it is enjoyed for its potential beauty. Similar to the way the image is de-materialized in his paintings, so is the function of these objects. Shovels are broken into a spectrum of color, zip-ties form a vibrant heart and flowers are given the opportunity to fly. In this way, Jensdotter enacts the power of artistic imagination to help us understand that design does not have to be destiny. In his new series of carved paintings, Jensdotter’s subject matter zooms out from portraits of individuals typical of his earlier work, taking instead the subjects of over-crowded ski slopes, seas of people in wave pools and packed atmospheres of raves. The works make visceral our human-scale and within the context of the exhibition we might find ourselves turning our questioning inward to ask: “am I performing by design or destiny?”
The artist has not merely asked us to grapple with such questions, he also humbly asks himself the same. Proclaiming Ecco Hominem, “Behold the Human,” the sincerity of his pursuit seeps into the work and is distilled into symbolic gestures that resonate with a shared human experience. While the world might be doomed, if nothing else, for those in front of Jensdotter’s work, he presents us with hope.
Andrew Jensdotter (b. 1976 in Logan, Utah) received his MFA in painting from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2014. His work has been exhibited across the US and in Mexico City. In 2019, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver presented FLAK, the first solo museum exhibition of Jensdotter’s work. He has been featured in national publications including Hyperallergic and Frieze Magazine. Ecco Hominem is the artist’s first-time showing work with Skye Gallery in Aspen.
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Credits: Text by Mardee Goff; Photos by Jess Bernstein Photo.
