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Email PageWithout Words
March 13, 2008- April 12, 2008
Reception: March 13, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Jennifer Poon
Claire Oliver
513 W 26th StClaire Oliver Gallery is proud to present the first East Coast exhibition of Bay Area Artist Jennifer Poon, entitled "Without Words". A series of large scale watercolors comprised of seemingly random sized paper pieces are pinned together forming six to ten foot long figurative works; here Poon attempts to reassemble her subjects' splintered pasts creating an unsettled normalcy. Like an open camera shutter, Poon's paintings capture both the physical movement and the ephemeral thoughts that comprise moments of internal struggle. Movement of thought is portrayed through movement of body: limbs flutter and faces contort.
Skilled in illustration and lexicons of personal and social symbology, as are her contemporaries Fay Ku and Peregrine Honig, Poon's bodies are in juxtaposition to each other as well as to varied animal, inanimate objects and, increasingly, to three dimensional elements as well. But with her increasing maturity of emotive expression-void of morality or of imperative outcome-Poon provokes solidarity with Marlene Dumas, in particular Dumas' oil and canvas and ink was on paper work from the mid-1980s through the late 1990s. For both artists, whether a single work tends toward portraiture or more complex compositions of inter-personal dynamics with multiple figures, there is a subtle but forceful demand upon the viewer to complete the scenario. The pure forensic potential that Poon lays out is as challenging as it is enthralling. As with any modern era figurative painter who explores violence, ambiguity, and irony, there is an extrapolation of ideas descended from Goya, then Dumas-and now Poon-are adept at settling a contemporary effect on such dramatic filtration of the human condition. Poon's intense, but ultimately and intentionally undefined, outlay of bodies and relationships creates a cocktail of uncertainty, angst and curiosity that sets it into a rarified air among art's emotional provocateurs.
Equally rare is the extent to which Poon's work is ultimately her own. Despite clear synergies with other artists, her work is technically and stylistically distinct. The sparsity of her strokes and the plain hand usage-her wet, color-laden brush could almost be a pencil-conspire to build narrative of each work's process that provides entry into Poon's explorations. The use of fabrics, and other tactile materials, whether as complementary forms and symbols or as additional surfaces and layers on paper, extends both Poon's layered stories and her ever, edgy balance of elements and urges. Her teetering play between intellectual and emotional implications sits, itself, in a kind of balance between abandon and constraint in composition and content; everything is there for the taking, if only just. Logic and appetite refuse to contradict each other, but rather sit in blithe proximity, leaving it incumbent on the viewer to summon enough courage to pierce the tension, the uneasy truce, that Poon leaves coiled in every work.
Jennifer Poon has had solo exhibitions of her work at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and The Pasadena Museum of California Art. Her work was featured in New American Paintings magazine (vol 61) and Artslant Magazine Los Angeles.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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