Artist: Jenni Crain
Exhibition title: Bent To Its Own Image
Venue: The Java Project, New York, US
Date: October 18 – November 15, 2015
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and The Java Project, New York
The Java Project is pleased to announce Bent To Its Own Image, a solo exhibition by Jenni Crain opening th Sunday, October 18 , 2015.
The exhibition continues Crainʼs exploration of architectural implications as impetus for emotive reverberation. Employing the gallery as a medium itself, Crain manipulates the spaceʼs specific parameters as subject to a frame. The glass wall of entry contextualized as the picture plane. The plane, a theoretical surface located between the eye point of the viewer and the material surface of the work, here embodied by the physicality of the glass, serving both as window and as wall as it distinguishes a simultaneous parallel/divide between a palpable and implied distance of observation or point of view. This duplicity demonstrative of Crainʼs extended interest in and investigation of the spatial and emotional capacities of interior versus exterior/internal versus external.
The title, Bent To Its Own Image, describing both the exhibition in its totality, as well as the two photographs of which it is comprised is derived from a passage of Virginia Woolfʼs novel, To The Lighthouse, first published in 1927. A novel understood as rendering a perception rather than a depiction of time and as “giving language to the silent space that separates people and the space that they 1 transgress to reach other.” Bent To Its Own Image (1) and Bent To Its Own Image (2) exist as two versions of the same image. (1), printed 4 inches x 6 inches, the measurement of a standard print, is adhered via adhesive photo corners to the internal plane of the glass pane at the front of the gallery. (2), printed at a scale 10 x the size of (1), is installed utilizing a material language indicative of the artistʼs sculptural works at the back wall of the gallery. Upon entry into the gallery space, the image of (1) is no longer visible as its subject is reciprocally replaced by the branded backing of the photographic paper. As the viewer approaches (2), the image becomes increasingly distorted as the photographic grain integrates into an abstract image. A navigation of the individual exhibitional properties proffers little direction, while the event of engagement amongst subject and environment provides opportunity for reaction apropos interaction. An event expounded by the image itself, where distortion in focus and framing motivate an envisaged moment implemented by mind and memory rather than pictorial depiction.
Bent To Its Own Image is the artistʼs second solo exhibition to date and will be on view via appointment through November 15 , 2015.
Jenni Crain, Bent To Its Own Image (1), 2015
Jenni Crain, Bent To Its Own Image (2), 2015
