Lauren Anaïs Hussey | Janine Iversen | Jamie Gray Williams : Picture-Writing
Marvin Gardens is pleased to announce the opening of “Picture-Writing,” an exhibition of oil paintings featuring the work of three different artists. Within this group of works, largely in an autumnal color palette, each artist creates their own cumulative compositional language through a focus on line-work that is almost calligraphic in effect. A process akin to automatic writing emerges just beneath the surface of these paintings, driving the self referentiality of their structure.
Lauren Anaïs Hussey’s works display sprawling overlays of line which remind us of the metal pen nib the artist uses in their studies. Gridded lattices dominate the image at times, and at other times retreat into the background as scaffolding, creating an atmospheric web of abstract writing.
Janine Iversen’s canvases display a refreshingly concise execution. Bringing together different speeds of painting, one can mostly follow the steps of their making, although the works still remain greater than the sum of their parts. Iversen’s smooth brushwork creates opaque gliding black lattices that produce a type of picture-writing.
Jamie Gray Williams brings a distinctly figurative aspect to the show. Compositions are built from a similar pattern of searching lines that are architecturally similar to those of Hussey and Iversen. However, within these networks of lines, volumes begin to describe broken up and twisted cartoonish figures in an almost cubist manner. The faces that now emerge arrest us with their gaze, causing an interruption to our reading.
