Jill Poyourow, Red Bikini and Other Works, Installation view, Grant Walquist Gallery, 2018. Image courtesy the gallery.
JILL POYOUROW
Red Bikini and Other Works
JILL POYOUROW
Red Bikini and Other Works
GRANT WAHLQUIST GALLERY
AUGUST 3 - SEPTEMBER 15, 2018
ERIK DAVIS-HEIM
SEPTEMBER 18, 2018
RESPONSE > PORTLAND, MAINE
Red Bikini and Other Works is a solo show of recent paintings by Jill Poyourow. As explained in the show's press release, the paintings are drawn from several ongoing series she has been working with for years. These include paintings based on a batch of photos taken during a family trip Jill went on as a child, a number of pieces relating to Soylent Green which she also saw in theaters on this trip, and a few paintings of photos of peasant women from vintage encyclopedias. The common thread throughout Red Bikini and Other Works seems to be a concern for what the life of a snapshot is after the moment it depicts has passed.
Jill Poyourow, Red Bikini and Other Works, Installation view, Grant Walquist Gallery, 2018. Image courtesy the gallery.
The handling of the paint is largely uniform regardless of whether the source material is found or from Poyourow's own life. Several of the paintings are based on photographic negatives, making the images appear stark and alien. At the same time the cause of this effect is recognizable, and it further insists on these painting's origin in photography. The paint is applied loosely in airy washes. The background and foreground elements blend in and out of one another. There is enough detail and specificity in terms of drawing that everything reads clearly, but no more than necessary. These are clearly paintings of photos that are meant to be understood as such. I think more formal experimentation like working from negatives, and looking for additional ways to explicitly connect the paintings back to photography would only strengthen the work.
Jill Poyourow, Deep Pool, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 20" x 20", 2017. Image courtesy the gallery.
The imagery in Red Bikini and Other Works pulls from mundane moments from daily life. The snapshots of Jill and her family are typical of ones any family might take on a holiday, while the vintage photos of peasants were originally made to document their disappearing modes of life. Even the paintings relating to Soylent Green avoid spectacle; instead of iconic scenes from the movie, Jill presents a portrait of the lead actor and two paintings of signs and posters from the theater.
All of these paintings were made in the past year, with significant distance from when the images they're based on were taken. The family photos were from a trip Jill took in the 70's, and the photos of peasants considerably longer ago than that. Jill's act of painting these images is a rumination on these moments and how they relate to their documentation. The viewer is invited to ask why they mattered, to whom they mattered, and why they might matter to you. I didn't come away with a clear answer to any of this other than that our own lives are made up in large part of a string of unremarkable moments like these ones.
Jill Poyourow, Red Bikini and Other Works, Installation view, Grant Walquist Gallery, 2018. Image courtesy the gallery.
It's not really obvious what Jill's feelings toward these photos are, or what memories she might associate with them. There are a handful of smaller abstract paintings with titles like "Primordial Night: Itchy Blanket" and "Full Belly" which read as attempts to recall and convey sensations from the trip. Clearly part of Jill's interest in these photos is in revisiting moments that were familiar to her at one point, but that are far enough away in time that whatever memories she has of them are remote. I don't think this is following a purely nostalgic impulse; the stylistic use of negatives insists on the fact that these are meditations on photos as much as on memories, and again make these relatively familiar images appear uncanny. I think Jill is offering this study of her own photos and memories as an example of how the two relate to each other. She moves on and applies this same method of examination to the photos of peasant women, photos of people and places she obviously has no memory of. In these pieces Jill seeks out new familiarity rather than contemplating her now alien past.
The Soylent Green paintings are interesting to me when considered alongside the rest of the show. While the other paintings are of snapshots from daily life and ask us why these moments might matter, the Soylent Green paintings state that this film, and the occasion of Jill seeing this film, mattered to her. These pieces insist on art's ability to connect us to larger themes outside of our immediate experiences, but they do so by citing a specific example of this from her own experience of a work of art. Jill's practice seems to be based on the notion that art's ability to speak universally is best accomplished by examining and elevating the singular and the discrete. On a technical level I like the way "Curtain Call" is hung from the wall un-stretched; it points to the object the painting is based on in a manner similar to how the paintings of negatives point to photography.
Jill Poyourow, Red Bikini and Other Works, Installation view, Grant Walquist Gallery, 2018. Image courtesy the gallery.
"The Family of Ma" is the most explicit statement of what appear to be Jill's working principals; and it is still expressed through a subtle use of editing and re-contextualization. The painting is of a book cover for the catalogue of Edward Steichen's exhibition "The Family of Man". Steichen's exhibition which debuted at MoMA in 1955 shares kinship with many of Jill's projects; "The Family of Man" brought together collections of photographs of people from different cultures around the world and sought to, "... express the universal through the individual and the particular, that demonstrate the importance of the art of photography in explaining man to man across the world.”. Despite the similarities in their methods and goals, Jill clearly has reservations about the sense of confidence Steichen had that his project could and would do what he intended without complication. "The Family of Ma" employs strategies used in other parts of the show to communicate this skepticism. The painting is colored like a negative of the original book cover, and the “n” in “man” is only present as a light outline. This minor alteration to the title neatly subverts Steichen's claim for universality by pointing to the full half of humanity it had left out.
Jill Poyourow, The Family of Ma, Acrylic, flashe and colored pencil on canvas, 20" x 20", 2017. Image courtesy the gallery.
Jill Poyourow received a B.S. from Western Washington University, Bellingham, and a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. She lives in Cape Neddick, Maine. Poyourow's solo exhibitions include POST, Los Angeles (catalogue with essay by Chris Kraus) and the Apex Gallery, South Dakota School of Mines, Rapid City. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at venues including: POST; Thomas Solomon’s Garage, Los Angeles; the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport; Dave Muller’s Three Day Weekend, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles; the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California; Annika Sundvik Gallery, New York; Side Street Projects, Santa Monica; and in the First Biennale Internazionale delle Arti FiliForme.
Erik Davis Heim is an artist and writer based in Providence, Rhode Island.
@schmerick_blavis_slime
Grant Wahlquist Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Portland, Maine. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (8 p.m. on the first Friday of each month during exhibitions), and generously by appointment.
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30 City Center, 2nd Floor
Portland, ME 04101
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RESPONSE
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