Tuesday Edition: Jessica Eaton
Filter Samples
8"x10" ($20) | 11"x14" ($50) | 16"x20" ($200) | 24"x30" ($1000)
by
Jessica Eaton
Roy G. Biv-tastic Tuesday greetings, my collector friends! Our NYC sunshine is still somewhere over the rainbow, and considering what a stranger clearing skies have been to these parts lately, I don't expect we'll be finding it any time soon. Rather than singing an off-season SAD song — which would undoubtedly be delivered off-key — I've been cheering myself up with the fictive rainbows of today's edition-maker, Jessica Eaton.
Filter Samples is the photographic artifact of an admirably obsessive endeavor. As Jessica describes it in her statement, "hundreds of swatches from Lee Filter sample packs were arranged on the window, by spectral wave transmission, to turn my living room into a ROYGBIV light box." While I can only wonder what it might be like to dwell in such a living room, I'm very grateful that I get to live with the resulting imagery.
Jessica's a Canadian artist who I've been admiring from afar for a while now via the interwebs. Her high-concept, appealing imagery has made appearances on the websites and blogs of some of my favorite photography friends — Tim's tinyvices features two portfolios of her photographs and Laurel's I Heart Photograph looked twice too.
A blogger herself, Jessica incited a flurry of keyboards tapping with her recent critically acclaimed solo debut at Toronto's Hunter and Cook. I was tipped off to the show by Horses Think; like its author, the talented-his-own-self Ofer Wolberger, I wanted to be able to check it out in person, especially after reading We Can't Paint's enthusiastic review. Daily Value was similarly impressed and had this to say about the exhibition:
Eaton's work re-imagines '70s-era minimalist and conceptual art: a time when artists aimed to strip the aesthetic object down to its most essential state and concept took precedence over traditional aesthetic concerns (a serial work of Eaton's—a diamond pattern captured mid-liftoff from its foundation of grid paper—especially invokes Sol LeWitt). Like her predecessors, Eaton uses a purist's palette, but, rather than baring the aesthetic object, she reveals it in the process of undressing.
Speaking of her predecessors, one of the things that I love about Jessica's work is the long list of associations it generates, connecting her to some of my favorite image-makers. We'll start close to home with 20x200's very own Penelope Umbrico, who shares a kinship of palette and post-photographic practice, and while Michael Lundgren's work is about something quite different, his obsession with the photographic object makes me want a seat at any table that they might gather around together. Another person I'd want to invite to that meal is the amazing Lisa Oppenheim, who I have a huge photo-crush on.
Delving further into Jessica's colorful abstractions, my mind alights on many of the artists included by our friends at Aperture as part of their stunning Edge of Vision initiative. Speaking of photo friends, Blind Spot has offered editions from several other kindred spirits — from Jonathan Lewis and his candy-colored rainbows to John Baldessari and Hannah Whitaker — they've got quite a range of talented, smart photographers considering light, image and object.
Enough about all of them, though! Let's talk about Jessica's recent westward expansion. She's still north of the border, but now clear across the continent; her latest solo exhibition, Variables, just opened at Vancouver's LES Gallery. Filter Samples is included in this reportedly awesome exhibition, which remains on view through July 12th.
Phew, that was a seriously link-tastic email. And now: I am done, although not for long. I'll be back tomorrow with a very special set of images from a very special fella. Look for me then!
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