JACQUELINE HUMPHRIES
January 12 – March 22, 2024 “The central image in these prints originates from a series of paintings I made in 2023. I was fascinated by the public actions of the Just Stop Oil activists, who protested climate change policy by throwing and spraying these paint pours and splatters that resembled the gestures of paintings I made earlier in my career. I thought if I pre-vandalize my paintings, maybe this would protect them from future vandals... or even provoke further attention to painting within the social media landscape in an unexpected way, revealing how social tensions coalesce around the contemplation of art.” — Jacqueline Humphries
Crown Point Press announces Jacqueline Humphries, an exhibition of new prints by the New York- based artist. Humphries created seven color etchings during her second Crown Point project in October 2023. The new prints are each nearly square, with a dot matrix background and a central splatter shape. The prints are untitled, qualified by the dominant color in parentheses, and Humphries’ choice of color in each print is uniquely subtle and varied. Layered hues vibrate against the staccato of dotted backgrounds and gestural foregrounds.
Replication of imagery is a characteristic of Humphries’ method of working. She makes handmade stencils from computer-generated iconography like emojis, emoticons, computer screen “snow”, and digital-like patterning. Additionally, she uses stencils made from splatters she has painted and then scanned and manipulated (stretched, flipped, reversed). Stencils allow Humphries to repeat imagery from one painting to another, to copy marks from earlier paintings, or to duplicate imagery in her prints. For example, Untitled (blue) and Untitled (orange) each share two plates: one, a background soap ground aquatint, printed in a different color for each print, and the same plate of spider-leg-like thin splashes, used also in Untitled (green).
The etching, Untitled (yellow) is patterned with black dots against a yellow and orange background. A maroon-brown paint splatter recedes behind black squished and stretched emoticons (the only time this kind of imagery shows up in all seven prints). Untitled (green) uses the same dot pattern as in Untitled (yellow) although the background is a vibrant green. The central splatter is in dark red, like a firework as it cascades to its end. An all-caps inventory number “JH179” in bright red anchors itself to the top right corner. The reference is arbitrary, and not relative to any inventory system.
Accompanying the new etchings in the exhibition are the ten prints Humphries created during her first residency at Crown Point Press in the fall of 2016. These prints incorporate grids, dot patterns, emojis, emoticons (imagery created with the use of handmade stencils) that are layered over gestural abstraction.
Jacqueline Humphries was born in 1960 in New Orleans. She has lived and worked in New York since the 1980s. Her work is in the collections of many art institutions including The Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; de Young Museum, San Francisco; and Tate Modern, London. In 2022, her work was included in the 59th Venice Biennale’s presentation, The Milk of Dreams, and in the same year her work was the subject of The Wexner Center for the Arts exhibition, Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:) which was accompanied by an exhibition catalog. Jacqueline Humphries is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery, New York and Modern Art, London. Jacqueline Humphries is on view in the Crown Point Gallery at 20 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, January 12 – March 22. The gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9AM – 5 PM.
