Juliet Jacobson makes pictures about pictures. Her still life drawings, made with gouache on paper and a patient tender hand, are meditations on how images are constructed. Jacobson makes pictures that are not so much about what is depicted, but rather about the experience of seeing, investigating the slipperiness of perceived reality. This show, her first at Western Exhibitions, opens in Gallery 2 at our Chicago location, alongside Elijah Burgher’s show in Gallery 1. A free public reception will be held on Friday, February 23 from 5 to 8pm. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm.

Jacobson borrows from a literary approach when assembling her compositions. She takes particular inspiration from how novels are able to combine a dizzying number of perspectives, prompting readers to juggle different characters’ voices and variable modes of address, each with a unique frame of reference. The process for each drawing includes painting, photography and collage. She often uses photographic material, posters, prints, or stock photos as substrate for her compositions. The original single-point perspective embedded in photographic material becomes fragmented when rephotographed. This is complicated even more by the undulating surface of crumpled or torn paper, further highlighting the many facets of perspective.

Jacobson depicts elements at actual size on top of their photographic referents. These elements are drawn from everyday life. For this show she has focused on roses, each with a different backstory: garden flowers stolen from a parking lot near the studio; blooms plucked from outside her apartment window; and showy commercial varieties purchased in bodegas and upscale flower shops. Each plant is rendered in a trompe l’oeil manner with great fidelity and detail. Each photograph is portrayed with hyper realism, capturing everything from lens distortion to the crinkle of the photographic paper. These works also often include Jacobson’s own art-making process, such as dabs of paint in the margins of the picture where she has tested color, areas of negative space, and half-rendered areas that appear unfinished. These modulations in process offer a more directly graphical mode of expression. Because of this Jacobson’s drawings are philosophical meditations on the blend of clarity and confusion that accompanies everyday acts of sensing, looking, and knowing.

Juliet Jacobson (b. 1977, Puyallup, WA) has shown work in the 2008 Busan Biennial in Korea, The Warehouse Gallery at Syracuse University, and in group exhibitions at The Sphinx Northeast in Hudson, NY, Ritter/Zamet in London, AreoPlastics in Brussels, and in New York City at Klaus von Nichtssagend, Blackston, and Friedrich Petzel. She has had solo exhibitions at Planthouse and Two Rams, both in New York City, Season in Seattle, and Kevin Bruk in Miami. Jacobson’s work was recently featured on Platform and has been written about in The New York Times, Artforum and Art News. Jacobson received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and her MFA from New York University in 2006. She currently splits time between New York City and Cold Spring, NY.

Image info: Juliet Jacobson, Something R (detail), 2023, Gouache and pencil on paper, 30 1/2 x 22 1/4 inches

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Tags: Chicago, Juliet Jacobson, Juliet Jacobson: Named Rose, Named Rose, West Town, Western Exhibitions