Contributed by William Corwin / Depictions of spirits and monsters are often combinations of the diagrammatic and the visceral: attributes packaged in an erotic or terrifying container. Amorelle Jacox’s luminous female presences in “Mothers of Time,” now on view at Management, are unassuming and recessive beings peering out between throbbing bands of color and eerie cones of light. She populates her large-scale canvases with measurement devices – rulers, color wheels, and sundry visual and geometric rubrics that guide the viewer’s interpretation of the powers invested in each of the goddesses or muses she has invented.
Cosmos (mother) is a blue deity within a glowing cerulean cylinder capped on top and bottom by swirling rainbow pinwheels and bookended by bands of teal and forest green. The figure is a singular piece in a mosaic of forms. In Cosmos, the mother form is on equal footing with the large triangle beneath and the tiny one above. They could be extensions of her body, but this remains equivocal because the body is but a part of Jacox’s universe of forms. The democratic relationship between human and geometric figures undergirds the mystical diagram the artist creates on each canvas. In Number (mother), a lithe figure with an upturned face holds a narrow, curving staff or rope of fire. Jacox plays with how the painted forms inflect the picture plane, as the fiery ribbon unevenly divides the stocky rectangle, bringing to mind Barnett Newman’s zips. At the feet of the goddess is a cheeky painted tape measure, showing the angle of deflection to lend scientific credibility to the artist’s mystical purpose.
Jacox’s mission is to present the spiritual forces of time and space, and she is confident enough sometimes to eliminate anthropomorphic representation and simply present raw energy. In Matter (mother), if there is a goddess within the streaming vertical bands of rust, tangerine, and pink, she has faded into the cascade of pigment. The artist’s repertoire of symbols takes over, and the top corners of the painting feature two enigmatic spirals – forms found throughout Neolithic Celtic architecture – as well as a central color wheel floating tensely between two light cones and a black hole at the bottom. The borders between colors suggest a chart of space, energy, or time – which is unclear. The vertical gesture and the depth of the receding colors create a vibrating sacred space within the canvas. With Movement (mother), Jacox takes a more firmly diagrammatic approach, enclosing a bluntly abstracted feminine form – a head atop two cones tip-to-tip, literally an hourglass figure – within expanding rectangles. The lower half of the goddess’s body becomes seven radiating lines ending in seven Lilliputian color wheels that almost hang off the canvas.
Void (mother) draws on the stereotype of sentimental fantasy. The flowing hooded cape of a mysterious figure doubles as a formalist gesture. Jacox has rendered the cape as smooth and smoky blue phosphorescence around two sharp triangles, the top one solid black and the bottom one a misty rainbow. She is challenging us to not be moved by this blank-faced being whose garment opens to reveal the infinite. While not overtly feminine, a small red streak and “V” at the bottom of the void playfully indicate the figure’s gender, merging sexual symbolism with lines of perspective and the light/time cones used by physicists and painters. This crossover between the spiritual and the scientific distinguishes Jacox’s clever and illuminating series.
“Amorelle Jacox: Mothers of Time,” Management, 39 East Broadway, New York, NY. Through June 7, 2026.
About the author: William Corwin is a sculptor and writer based in New York.
