Jessica Eaton
Exhibition: Jessica Eaton: Pictures for Women
Dates: February 2 - March 4, 2017
Higher Pictures is pleased to present Pictures for Women by Jessica Eaton. This is the artist’s third solo show with the gallery.
The exhibition comprises two new series: Pictures for Women, an homage to the work of influential female artists, and Transitions, which builds on the additive color experiments she developed in her celebrated series Cubes for Albers and Lewitt, 2010–2014. Through Eaton’s rigorous experimental techniques, informed by her study of color theory and optical science, viewers are forced to question the objectivity and singularity of vision and the photographic image.
Upon viewing Carmen 01 (Carmen Herrera, Red & Blue, 1993), it is difficult to parse what a photograph is. Generating form from photography’s relationship to time, Eaton transforms the physical elements of painting into a secondary abstraction that can only be imagined and seen by the unique vision specific to a camera. While seemingly abstract in nature, Eaton’s work is entwined with sophisticated art historical references and elements of the personal. Her work is at the intersection of Lazlo Maholy-Nagy’s “New Vision”, Berenice Abbott’s scientific innovations, Op art’s illusionary effects, and Kinetic Art’s representations of motion. Through her visual experiments, Eaton insists on the multiplicity and mutability, rather than the authority, of sight.
Jessica Eaton (b. 1977, Regina, Saskatchewan) received her BFA from the Emily Carr University in Vancouver. Solo exhibitions include Wild Permutations at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland; Flash: Jessica Eaton at the California Museum of Photography, Riverside; and Ad Infinitum, The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Eaton has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Under Construction – New Positions in American Photography, Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam; Process and Abstraction at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Transformer Station; Color Acting: Abstraction Since 1950 at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; Québec Triennial at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Photography is Magic, Daegu Photography Biennale; and Phantasmagoria at Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver. Eaton was nominated this year for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. In 2015, Eaton was selected by the Capture Photography Festival to create a major public art commission for the city of Vancouver. Notable press includes The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, ARTnews (cover) and The Guardian. Her work can be found in the public collections of the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, among others. Jessica Eaton lives and works in Montréal.
For more information contact Kathryn McElroy at 212-249-6100.