|
Citysearch.com classifies Jen Pack’s first solo exhibition
as a “Folk Arts & Crafts” event. I assume this description derives from
two indisputable but not necessarily related facts: Jen Pack is a woman
and her medium of choice is fabric. That such a combination could result
in anything other than “Folk Arts & Crafts” is apparently inconceivable
to Citysearch editors. Truth be told, the works in roygbp are
stitched together out of brightly colored pieces of delicate, translucent
fabric stretched over plain wooden frames. Conventional associations with
handicraft, quilting, women's work, etc. are further compounded by the
works' utter prettiness; the saturated colors and sensuous textures are
simply delicious in a gummy-bear and cotton candy kind of way. But Pack’s
work is anything but folksy, and while unavoidably “feminine,” its most
compelling aspect emerges from the way it engages and transforms the conventions
of muscular minimalism.
In the tradition of Eva Hesse, Pack plays with the
tension between classic elements of minimalism - the square, the horizontal,
the grid - and the feminine, domestic implications of her medium and methods
of production. In Double Green, two pieces of "striped" fabric
(strips of varying shades of green, stitched together) are stretched around
a wooden frame, front and back, at right angles to each other. The translucency
of the fabric allows the stripes on the back layer to show through, creating
an imperfect grid. Stretched and irregular, the grid lines are subject
to the whim of the diaphanous fabric, and an additional ocular distortion
results from the distance between the two layers. Reshaping the perfect,
rectilinear patterns of minimalism in this feminine, stretchy, and contingent
idiom, Pack mixes high and “folk” art forms as well as the codes by which
those art forms are gendered.
Some pieces refer more directly to this connection
between artistic production and gender. While I found Seven Zippers
too facile in its use of the conventions of sewing to evoke the female
body, the comparison emerges with greater impact in a pair of works titled
Pocket (Out) and Pocket (In). These two small squares
of pink fabric are each adorned with their own sewn pocket. Pocket
(Out)'s hangs flaccidly from the center of the piece, while Pocket
(In)'s is discreetly tucked beneath the surface, its contours only
visible through the scrim of semi-transparent fabric. This tongue-in-cheek
representation of physical sexual difference derives from the transformation
of a single form - the conventional (yet highly suggestive) pocket. Sexual
difference is here literally a matter of turning inside out.
Using what she terms "found color" or fabric colors
that are mass-produced rather than hand-dyed, Pack creates her work with
a sewing machine. These elements of mechanization create another tension
- between “folk” craft and mechanical production - which renders her work
strangely handmade and modern at the same time. This in-between quality
is further reflected in her skillful use of color. The distinct colors
implied by the show's title, roygbp (an acronym for red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, purple) are echoed in the separate, reproducible
hues of commercially available fabrics. However, rather than remain within
this elementary palette, Pack revels in the transitions, the subtle shades
between colors. Pieces like Stop and Go and Yellow Gradation
employ nuanced color combinations and iridescent fabrics that interact
with ambient light to create flickering, liminal effects. The experience
is akin to the intensity and delicacy of color found on the inside of
your eyelids when you close your eyes on a sunny day.
Located at the intersection of several dichotomies
- feminine and masculine, craft and art, handmade and mass-produced -
roygbp challenges our expectations of gender and artistic production
by creating an intimate perceptual experience that is simultaneously richly
present and resolutely indefinable.
< back to art
|
