Woman
JDJ is thrilled to present Woman, an exhibition of new work by Mark Barrow & Sarah Parke, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with the artists and the first at the gallery’s new location in Tribeca at 373 Broadway.
Inspired by the idea of 'woman' as the progenitor of everything material and intellectual, Barrow & Parke base the works' compositions on ancient fertility statues. The figures' forms are rudimentarily redrawn by finger on a phone or tablet, the bulbous lines becoming containers for a variety of tactile and visual information within the paintings on hand-woven and embroidered fabric as well as the gouache and colored pencil drawings.
In addition to the five Woman paintings and drawings on view, a number of other drawings depict patterns the duo created to populate their works on paper, paintings, and wallpaper. The genesis of many of the patterns for the exhibition come from phrases used to describe women—all legs, bombshell, a tall glass of water, or dreamboat; for example. A site-specific wallpaper design renders the pattern of the gallery’s pressed tin ceiling as strands of pearls.
Barrow & Parke present their most ambitious iteration of works in the series to date, following the debut of the Woman painting series at NADA Miami in 2019 and their current installation on view at the Fabric Workshop Museum in Philadelphia through September 26th. Here, the artists' recent forays into figurative imagery intersect with their decade-long exploration of the logic of weaving and its relationship to visual and digital systems; their interest in craft, design, and artistic practices that exist outside of the art historical canon, and their growing focus on the underlying structures at play in our culture.
Barrow and Parke have also curated their first group exhibition to run concurrently with this solo presentation. Dangerous Pattern at JDJ the Ice House in Garrison, NY will be on view from September 18 through November 12, 2021.