JJ Manford’s new suite of paintings in Fifth Season radiate.
The intricate compositions, often interiors, some with a landscape element, emanate light. Dawn rays dance and reflect on artworks, quintessential architecture and design icons. Harsh, life affirming spring light penetrates cherry trees and ricochets through panoramic windows, illuminating mid-century classics and modern masterpieces. Flat, strong and clear summer siesta light pours through a skylight into the kitchen of Luis Barragán’s Casa Pedregal, spotlighting a ceramic sculpture by Asger Jorn. A mid-summer sunset on the Louisiana Museum’s sea-facing terrace horizon a perfect colour gradient. A monumental Calder sculpture casting shadows on reflective tabletops and a single Goldfinch eyeing the beholder. In Manford’s considerate paintings there is a light that never goes out.
There is a sense of spring and summer, new beginnings, longing and contemplative hope in many of the thirteen new paintings in the Fifth Season. Manford’s interiors and exteriors are beautifully uncanny. Many of us are so familiar with the architecture, design pieces and artworks depicted in the paintings that there is sense of déjà vu upon first encounter. You feel you might have been there before or perhaps you have seen it in a great coffee table book or design documentary. While Manford’s rooms appear real, in a literal sense they are not. They are thoughtful assemblages and juxtapositions of spaces, objects and ideas. The paintings are psychedelic, ambiguous and wonderfully weird. Thoroughly researched and meticulously executed, they retain a poetic and intuitive energy.
There are never any humans physically present in the compositions, but we are there in every line and object. Etel Adnan, whose poem gave inspiration to the exhibition title, Ingmar Bergmann, Hilma af Klint, Asger Jorn, Kermit the Frog, Karel Appel, Alexander Calder, Poul Henningsen, Keith Haring, Bugs Bunny, Arne Jacobsen, Little My, Matisse, Victor Brauner, Miró, Frank Gehry, Luis Barragán amongst others are part of the eclectic motley crew found in these works. Simultaneously, the works nod towards Scandinavia, Hammershøi and the CoBrA movement. Luminous beings in luminous scenes. All these elements and ideas converge on canvas and create complex meditations on the current human condition, our history and complicated path forward.
"They tell me there are four seasons but I live in a fifth one which is your space and your time". -- - Etel Adnan / five senses for one death
JJ Manford, born 1983 Boston, Massachusetts, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Manford received a BFA from Cornell University in 2006, a Post-Baccalaureate certificate from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, and an MFA from Hunter College in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include: Jaune Brilliant, Galeria Marta Cervera, Madrid, Spain, 2024, Hayden Rowe Street, Derek Eller Gallery, NY, USA, 2024, The Golden Pheasant at Flamingo Estate & Other Tales of Wanderlust, Harper’s, East Hampton, NY, USA, In A Western Town, Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2023. Our House, Harper’s, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2022, Moon Salon, Derek Eller Gallery, NY, USA, 2022. Manford’s work has been acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA, ICA Miami, Miami, Florida, USA and Everson Museum of Art of Syracuse, USA. A new publication Rooms: The Works and Life of JJ Manford with text by Gordon F. Sander is out now on aminori.
Kilde:
V1 Gallery
V1 Gallery