Rachel Jones Red, Forged

Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg presents an exhibition of new paintings by British artist Rachel Jones.

 

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There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.

— Zora Neale Hurston

Red, Forged, 2023

Oil stick and oil pastel on paper
51 x 24 cm (20.07 x 9.44 in)

Red, Forged, 2023

Oil stick and oil pastel on stretched canvas (diptych)
Overall 250 x 320 cm (98.43 x 125.98 in)

While music may seem an unlikely aperture for understanding [painting], music and images share a fundamental form of organisation as pattern that structures our perceptions of both the sonic and the visual. As a particularly pleasing arrangement of sounds, music is a series of patterns that are neither random nor wholly original or spontaneous. Similarly, it is the patterns of any visual field that compose it as distinctive or related to a given form or genre. Reading the fundamental forms of patterning through which both sound and images register as meaningful or evocative, effective or affective, representational or expressive forms provide a point of entry…

— Tina Campt

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Red, Forged, 2023

Oil stick and oil pastel on unstretched canvas
22 x 23 cm (8.66 x 9.05 in)

Red, Forged, 2023

Oil stick and oil pastel on unstretched canvas
95 x 305 cm (37.4 x 120.08 in)

I don’t think life is inherently coherent.

— Nikki Giovanni

Red, Forged, 2023

Oil stick and oil pastel on unstretched canvas
31 x 62 cm (12.2 x 24.41 in)

Red, Forged, 2023

Oil stick and oil pastel on paper
17 x 50 cm (6.7 x 19.68 in)

“...someday somebody’ll

Stand up and talk about me,

And write about me–

Black and beautiful–

And sing about me,

And put on plays about me!

I reckon it’ll be

Me myself!

Yes, it’ll be me.”

— Langston Hughes

Red, Forged, 2023

Oil stick and oil pastel on paper
35 x 41 cm (13.77 x 16.14 in)

Red, Forged, 2023

Oil stick and oil pastel on unstretched canvas
300 x 200 cm (118.11 x 78.74 in)

 

Red, Forged, 2023

Oil stick and oil pastel on unstretched canvas
329 x 194 cm (129.52 x 37 in)

time will see

that’s what i think about a lot in relation to making things
how passing through time, or it passing through you, becomes a way to learn things
so looking at the back, and the front and the sides
one convergence of experience or thought or feeling, and then springing forth from that
how the paintings aren’t about one thing, but an accumulation of things felt over time
eaten in little meal-like portions to consume and digest

                                                                            endured-enjoyed

— Rachel Jones

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