Jessica Rankin: Sky Sound

Sky Sound is a solo exhibition of new work by the Australian-born, New York-based artist Jessica Rankin, these works take poetry as their starting point, particularly that of her mother, and explore landscape as a vehicle for emotion and personal memory. Through embroidery and painterly marks, the artist weaves together personal, historical, and literary references to create colorful works that are at once topographic, cosmological, and psychological.

The artist came to see painting as a way to "build the world, protect and assert oneself." The 26 works in this exhibition highlight the interplay between the fluidity of paint and the precision of stitching, qualities that now characterize her work. For the artist, this tension complicates notions of "real" gesture associated with the painterly tradition and relates to her interests in cognition and language by conveying "the sense that thought can be both ethereal and heavy". Some marks repeat themselves in painful cycles, while others flicker and appear. Memories are formed and forgotten in equal measure. To this end, Rankin creates constellation-like compositions in which paint and line connect, respond, intensify, complete, and erase one another.

The exhibition can be understood as an ongoing dialogue between the artist and her mother, a published poet who died when she was eight. Filled with overlapping circular shapes, dense embroidery sections define a black circle; diffuse brushstrokes radiate outward from thin rings of paint; a large pale-yellow sphere with white lines on its left edge is Reminiscent of the diamond ring effect seen during a solar eclipse. Loose, wide channels of purple, blue, and white paint extend beyond the confines of the canvas as if tracing the unstoppable movement of a natural yet predictable phenomenon. The circular theme recurs in many of the works in the exhibition, depicted in complete phases of parts and wholes.

Jessica Rankin - << Sky Sound >>
Date: 20 Sep – 9 Nov 2024
Gallery: White Cube
Address: 50 Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong
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