Profiles
Work by Lavaughan Jenkins and Gary Duehr
The eyeless, flat black silhouettes by Gary Duehr are like oversized shadows without mass, looming from an indeterminate space. It is the space that we stare into, our minds sorting the edges and bumps, inferring 100 things inside of a millisecond and delivering judgement before we have registered the moment itself. We see the undefined as an open invitation (even in the form of another person) we readily project ourselves to satisfy the need for a conclusive understanding of someone else, prescribing arbitrarily and trusting automatically.
Lavaughan Jenkins takes an entirely different tack, building up the individual in with great specificity and detail in a thick topography of paint. Features are formed in pigment, presenting the messy complexities of identity - a self that is moving and living rather than maintained. In these paintings the subject is not trapped within the tidy boundaries of the picture plane, instead their presence projects into ours.
What are we looking for when we look to someone else? What can we know or understand of a mind or body not our own? Lavaughan Jenkins and Gary Duehr take the familiar genre of portraiture to provoke questions about the boundaries between us and them, me and you.
Opening reception: Friday June 3, 6pm-8:30pm
"Unknown Suspect #3"
Graphite on panel, 2016
Gary Duehr