Here’s the press release of the day, which was selected because the language used to describe Josephine Halvorson‘s beautiful, old-school perceptual paintings makes them sound edgy and very fashionable–sort of relational aesthetics-y. Halvorson teaches painting at The Cooper Union and at Princeton University, and she serves as a Core Critic in the MFA program at Yale University. “What Looks Back,” the Brooklyn artist’s second exhibition with Sikkema Jenkins & Co, is on view from October 21 to December 3, 2011. I’m looking forward to seeing her new work.
Josephine Halvorson has an itinerant practice. She searches for objects willing to �look back.’ Working perceptually on site, Halvorson�s paintings contain the reciprocities that develop between artist and object, and become testaments to time spent. The exchanges, which take place in a single session, test the limits of the body, witness the vagaries of weather and light, attract passing strangers, and – when materialized in paint – take on unexpected meanings.
The works on view were made in places as diverse as Shoshone, California; Canaan, New York; Akureyri, Iceland; and Shoreham, England. Halvorson’s explorations are not only geographical, but also psychological. Chance encounters with objects in their environments realize internal glimpses of paintings unmade yet somehow anticipated.
Halvorson considers a painting successful when it asserts a life independent of its power to represent either the original object or the experience of its own making. She hopes these paintings return the attention that produced them and, as a group, evoke an ever-evolving narrative.
“Josephine Halvorson: What Looks Back,” Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York, NY. October 21-December 3, 2011.
Related posts:
NY Times Art in Review: Fischer, Halvorson, Santore (December 2009)
Nice paintings! But the write up needs to go. The work is basically still life; why not write about it as it relates to that tradition? Also, the style and method (finishing in one session)is very reminiscent of Luc Tuymans, with a little more obvious use of color.