Jennifer Monick

September 15 – October 17, 2001

Kent Gallery is pleased to open its Fall Season with the multifaceted explorations of the New York based artist, Jennifer Monick.  Recently exhibited at the Drawing Center, NY as well as the Aldrich Museum of Art in Ridgefield, CT, this will be the first one-person show of Monick’s work with this gallery.  The works exhibited here will include inter-related works in photography, process-oriented paper works, and three-dimensional sculpture.

Most of the works shown here can be thought of as products of their making as opposed to depictions or representations.  Paper works and sculpture were created as representations of their material sense only, whereas the accompanying photographic works are thought of as signifiers of the world as it is locally perceived.

In approaching the desire to work with paper, Monick has been concerned with its loaded history with regard to how to make it meaningful.  In a shift of approach, Monick pursued executing a work of art with paper in a manner that would maintain the original integrity of the material without masking the surface with other representational markings.  This lead to a concern for the physical entity as an active volume.                       

            Now I am more keen on experiencing the materials, the inside and out, flat and thick,

            as the same thing, as the same place - acting not out of frustration but out of a desire

            to realize a mutual state of surface and body.  The decisions are generated by the

            realization or sensation of absorption.  

She began to explore the expressive possibilities through invasive procedures that were performative in nature, with the resultant object becoming a memory or relic of the process or labor employed.  In most instances, the process was a repeated gesture undertaken over a period of days or weeks.   These attitudes have recently found application to three-dimensional works and the medium of photography as presented here in installation form.

            How to keep that membrane porous.  The way the cardboard box is leaking, overflowing, and

            empty simultaneously.  The way the river can absorb me making a private place for myself

            for a moment, an inverted island, the solid body, thin pail and lenient water.