Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster
“Fifteen Seconds”
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 25, 4-8 pm
B-Side Gallery
Face masks are required

2251 S Michigan Ave. Suite 220, Chicago, 60616

Life is often full of small moments of clarity and compassion that we hold onto, to get through to the next day. However, social media has redefined our 24-hour march through time, into intangible and ephemeral communications and gestures.

In “Fifteen Seconds,” Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster has created a series of twelve paintings that concede to the beauty of ordinary life, the tactility of glass as a material, and its presence in the current technologies we all use, such as smartphones and tablets. These digital screens are increasingly becoming the conduit for recording and storing human memory.

Her paintings are derived from screenshots taken from Instagram’s “story” feature – vertical images and videos uploaded by the platform’s users, lasting up to 15 seconds, which disappear 24 hours once posted. Jessica paints in the 9:16 ratio defined by Instagram’s parameters, immortalizing the fleeting documentation of ordinary reality made by her closest friends, professional colleagues, and acquaintances who hold a place within her online social network.

Reacting against Richard Prince’s “New Portraits,” Jessica gained permission to appropriate the screenshots she selected. In doing so, she included the date the original image or video was uploaded to Instagram, along with the initial author’s name, as to triumph human connectivity and underscore memory in an ever-isolated world.

“Fifteen Seconds” proposes that the viewer reimagines the contours of the digital sphere, in order to gain a more meaningful social engagement, rather than a technological abyss for mass consumption and the dissemination of information. Jessica asks, in which and what type of space is memory recorded, created, and shared?

About the Artist
Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster received her BFA degree in Fine Art Photography from the Corcoran College of Art & Design (2013) and holds an MFA from The Studio Art from New York University (2018). She has participated in multiple group exhibitions throughout the United States, including the AXA Art Prize (formerly the XL Catlin Art Prize, 2018). The AXA Art Prize was hosted by the San Francisco Institute of Art, Linda Warren Projects, and the New York Academy of Art, and was juried by curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, MoMA, and Gagosian Gallery. As a selected finalist for Art Olympia, Jessica has had her work exhibited at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (2019).

Her most recent exhibitions include “Ten Paintings Upstairs” at VSOP Projects (2021), “Hoarders House” at Field Projects (2020), and “Relics of a Promised Life” at SPRING/BREAK Art Show (2020). Her residencies include the School of Visual Arts Summer Program (2019) and the Studios of Key West (2019). In addition to her exhibitions and residencies, Jessica has served as adjunct photography faculty at New York University. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post (2013) and New American Paintings (2020).

Image Credit
“September 4, 2019 (Billy)
2021
Reverse oil painting on tempered glass
16 x 9 inches (16.25 x 9.25 inches, framed)
Courtesy of the artist and FLXST Contemporary.

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Tags: Chicago, Fifteen Seconds, FLXST Contemporary, Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster, Near South Side