Hales Gallery
Hales is delighted to announce Conflux, a solo exhibition of historic works by Virginia Jaramillo (b. 1939, El Paso, Texas). Her third solo exhibition with the gallery features works made in New York City in the 1970s and early 1980s. Conflux will coincide with Jaramillo’s first solo museum show – Virginia Jaramillo: The Curvilinear Paintings, 1969 –1974 at the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas opening in Fall 2020.
In the paintings and natural linen fiber works exhibited in Conflux, we see a break from the smooth, pristine surfaces of her curvilinear paintings which came before. Here, Jaramillo explores different techniques, experimenting with washes of paint, ground earth pigments, and formulated linen fiber. Representing a period of great artistic freedom in her six-decade career, these pivotal works reflect Jaramillo’s meticulous way of working which continues throughout her oeuvre.
The exhibition title, Conflux suggests the confluence of ideas and the merging of two bodies of water. Both series are united by Jaramillo’s formal endeavor to make works that test the limits of physical possibility whilst maintaining structural integrity. In the Stained Paintings, she makes the paint as thin as possible whilst creating deep visual space. In Foundations, she uses strands of linen fiber – the thinnest material possible to make her relief works, in which she builds up thick areas and allows other areas to remain almost translucent. Akin to two streams of thought merging together, the works in Conflux are connected by water – from the poured, stained, pooling of layers of paint to the consolidation of soaked linen fibrous pulp and ground earth pigments.
Underlying the works in Conflux is an understanding of space, surface, and the organization of the world around us. Jaramillo’s work preserves a process of thinking about being and a questioning of what upholds meaning in life. In her ongoing investigations, Jaramillo looks to ancient cultures to discover what unifies us – drawing upon architecture and artifacts to see how past societies lived and believed. In abstract works, Jaramillo uniquely reveals these traces of humanity. The exhibition invites the viewer to contemplate and create their own interpretations and connections to the earth. In Jaramillo’s ethereal washes of paint and complex geometric compositions, the civilizations are long gone but the foundations remain.
Ruznic’s first solo exhibition at Hales draws on personal and collective memories to create paintings that deeply connect with the human psyche. In this new body of work, Ruznic turns towards domesticity, family life, and relationships. Playing with ambiguity, the paintings lie on the threshold of form – figures emerge from the blurred shapes and scumbled marks on the canvas.
Hales is proud to announce that the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has acquired Time Fractal, 1973, by American artist Virginia Jaramillo. As revered art institutions continue to recognize Jaramillo’s six-decade career, this prominent acquisition sees her work enter one of the largest art museums in North America.
Hales is proud to announce that The Chrysler Museum of Art has acquired Ghost, 2015, by Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke. First exhibited as a part of the exhibition IWM Contemporary: Hew Locke at Imperial War Museum in London in 2015, Ghost, touches upon Locke’s recurring motif of the ship.
Conflux will open on 10 September at Hales New York with a limited number of visitors allowed into the exhibition space at one time, in accordance with government guidelines and enhanced safety measures in place. Advance appointments are recommended but not required. If visiting without an appointment, we ask that you provide contact details at the front desk, for contact tracing.
