JDJ
Garrison, New York

www.jdj.world | jayne@jdj.world | @jdj.theicehouse

Lucia Love & Barnett Cohen

LUCIA LOVEs visually rich paintings and drawings are loaded with narrative and symbolism, with references to art history, mythology, politics, and the dynamics of power. Like a work of speculative fiction, Love often creates a pastiche of fantasy and reality, as elements sourced from news media exist on an equal plane to those of pure imagination.

This presentation highlights her highly experimental drawing practice, focusing on ten works made with ink and watercolor on paper. Love’s drawings are quite different from one another stylistically—some feeling more abstract and painterly, as if the image is materializing right before your very eyes, and others feel more reflective of her background in animation with their bold use of line. She uses the medium in a free-flowing way, to workshop characters, ideas, and formal elements before they appear in their more concrete forms in her paintings.

Lucia Love (b. 1988, New York, NY) attended the School of Visual Arts on a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, where she studied painting and animation. She is co-host of the podcast Art and Labor, which chronicles the stories of social justice organizing within the art world and advocates for fair labor practices for artists, museum workers, art handlers, interns, and anyone traditionally overworked and underpaid in the field. Her solo exhibition FIREWATER is on view at JDJ through December.

BARNETT COHEN’s use of common language and imagery found on stickers is a reflection of how American society expresses particular notions of identity and desires to make it more visible. He researches and collects thousands of stickers, which are then cut and applied to the surface of the canvas between several layers of polycote, creating a smooth, uniform surface. The stickers are layered densely on top of one another into compositions that reflect a cacophony of positions and messaging, from the political to the social to the economic.