Jane Harris: New Painting
August 21, 2005—March 12, 2006The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum presented the first solo museum exhibition in the United States of British painter Jane Harris, on view August 21, 2005, through March 12, 2006.
Based on the deceptively simple geometry of the elliptical form, Harris's paintings defy easy categorization. At once highly controlled and wildly disorienting, Harris revels in entertaining opposites: abstract/figurative, flat/spatial, cerebral/decorative, and contrived/playful. These dichotomies, however, do not engender any uncertainty, but instead manifest themselves in paintings that are rigorously intellectual, physically commanding, and potently spiritual.
The works included in this exhibition, completed over the course of the prior year during a teaching sabbatical from Goldsmiths College in London, exhibited a radically-changed palette from Harris's recent works. Utilizing iridescent, metallic pigments that are mixed with traditional oil colors, the artist heightened her control of surface reflectivity, creating works in which perception of color and space change drastically, depending on the viewer's position. This new color sense, combined with Harris's methodical paint handling, reinvigorated the issue of the sublime in art in remarkable ways. Due to their unique optical and physical effects, Harris's paintings can only be understood by direct observation. Impossible to successfully reproduce, these works act like intense psychological mirrors and demand the actual presence of the viewer. They are a powerful argument for not only the continuing importance of painting, but, by extension, the importance of the museum or gallery experience.
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Born in Dorset, England, in 1956, Harris lives and works just outside London. She has had solo exhibitions at Hales Gallery, London; the Southampton City Art Gallery, England; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Kontainer Gallery, Los Angeles; and Galerie Hollenbach, Stuttgart.
Top of page: Jane Harris, Deuce, 2005, 64" x 78". Oil on canvas. Courtesy: Hales Gallery, London. Photo: FXP Photography, London
