Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery presents a show of new oil paintings on jute by Jennifer J. Lee.  The show of small-sized canvases will be installed in the main space of the gallery from January 9 through February 10.  An opening reception for the artist will be held on Wednesday, January 9 from 6-8PM.

Lee paints in a quasi photo-realistic style, her images sourced from internet searches of banal subjects in the vein of “the most photographed barn in America.”  Her subjects of choice sit at the intersection of recognizability and genericism. Lee has referred to her deep image searches as a metaphorical road trip for observational painting, with the artist moving forward into parts unknown, scrutinizing her discoveries and collecting notes along the way. In many of the paintings, the subject is decentralized through pattern, disrupting the figure-ground relationship and referring to abstract painting movements such as Op Art. The rough jute she paints on has a diffusing quality as well; the surface forces Lee’s brush strokes to fizzle at the edges, creating a low-res quality that refers back to the digital nature of the source imagery. The resulting painted textures accumulate into images that obliquely (and sometimes overtly) look to psychedelia and a “stoner” sensibility, always with a sideways glance at images that relate to the artist’s own personal perspective.