January 6, 2024 - February 17, 2024
Gallery reception: Saturday, January 6 from 2:00 to 5:00 pm
We are pleased to announce the exhibition “Mary Jones: Significant Properties,” a presentation of new and recent oil on digitally printed canvas paintings by this veteran New York based artist.
Join us for an opening reception on Saturday, January 6 from 2:00 to 5:00 pm. “Mary Jones: Significant Properties” is presented in conjunction with “Nancy Youdelman: Dreamwork.” Both exhibitions continue through February 17 at as-is.la
The underlying source material here comes from vintage modern design publications, thus the title “Significant Properties.” Some photographic images—a Richard Neutra designed desert house, for instance—can be recognized as such. Most however are far more obscure and further disguised by a process of digital collage before emerging from the printer to be stretched and then overpainted with sometimes brightly colored accents applied by hand.
This highly attenuated production process and the richly complex images it produces might seem to operate at some distance from the contemporary painting discourse with which this artist identifies. Quite the contrary. For the overt tension between “how they come to be” and “what they are” lies at the heart of Jones’ project, animating everything that follows and making her own stubborn loyalty to the painting discourse that much more clearly a part of the art experience itself.
Mary Jones received her BFA and MFA degrees from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She began her career in Los Angeles and has lived and worked in New York since 1986. Jones has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently a one-person exhibition in New York at High Noon in 2023. Her work is in notable art collections including the Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles. Jones is Senior Critic at RISD, where she has taught since 1998 and an instructor at SVA since 2009. As an art writer Jones has also contributed to the “Brooklyn Rail,” “BOMB Magazine,” and “artcritical.”