SOLO EXHIBITION | JACKSON, WY
Altamira Fine Art Jackson is pleased to present a solo exhibition for New Mexico artist Jivan Lee.
Please join us for an Artist Reception Saturday, September 23 from 5:30-7:30pm and Meet the Artist.
SEASONALITY
Jivan Lee conveys the wonder of his immersive practice through iterative impact, an artistic instinct that guides two sequences of paintings made across many seasons along the Rio Grande south of Taos, New Mexico. His landscapes, presented in a September show at Altamira entitled Seasonality, capture a narrative through line that simultaneously embraces and transcends temporality.
His strategy of painting en plein air on panels of the same size and composition creates a kaleidoscopic documentation of his lived experience. “My goal is to relate to the place as directly as I can and see what arises out of that commitment,” Lee says. “Any particular season, at any particular time, is unique.” By returning to these specific locations, he both honors and blurs their specificity. Seen together, the paintings emphasize “a sense of experiencing all the seasons, all at once,” he says.
Instinct guides his site selection: “I go there because I’ve been intuitively and viscerally pulled to that location for some reason.” His commitment to the story of place necessitates returning, over and over again. By presenting the seasonal paintings en masse, his personal preferences for certain conditions — of light, of contrast — dissolve into a portrait of place as nuanced as it is complex. “The work is more powerful when seen together because of the things I don’t like as much as the things I do,” he says. “There is something profound about going very deep into a site that is personal or local, rather than zooming on to the next bright and shiny thing. When we go deep, a remarkable number of discoveries can be made that have a universality to them.”
Pre-sales available. Contact the gallery for details. (307) 739-4700, connect@altamiraart.com.