Day 4571: Photorealistic Paintings on Burlap & A Feel Good Story.

      

"Visible": junk collage.

  

Want music?

   Click: Chaka Khan, Stay/Sweet Thing

 

2GN2S

Photorealistic Paintings

by 

Jennifer J. Lee

Detail of “Lee Jeans.”

On the loosely woven surface of jute burlap, Brooklyn-based artist Jennifer J. Lee paints photorealistic scenes that explore the saturation of images in contemporary experience. The fabric’s gridded structure conjures associations with pixellated screens, playing with the relationship between digital and analog representations of everyday objects.

“Acid Jeans” (2024), oil on jute, 16 × 12 inches

Recent paintings, nearly a dozen of which were on view in the artist’s solo exhibition at Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, highlight a personal glimpse of nostalgia, a fascination with the act of looking, and seemingly banal imagery transfigured into symbolic references and objects.

“Security Mirror” (2024), oil on jute, 13 × 13 inches

Lee’s paintings starkly contrast the instant gratification of scrolling through endless images, challenging the speed at which we consume information. She describes her process as a form of “waking meditation and sustained observation,” translating digital pixels into hand-painted brushstrokes and stretching fabric to simulate screens.

“Pizza” (2024), oil on jute, 12 × 20 inches

The artist’s technical ability to translate finite details onto a  rugged surface speaks to the time and attention required to produce a single painting. Small in scale, her pieces reveal surprising interactions between the objects’ surfaces and the woven jute.

“Beach” (2024), oil on jute, 12 × 21 inches

“Tennis” (2024), oil on jute, 22 × 15 inches (detail below)

“Lee Jeans” (2024), oil on jute, 15 × 13 inches

Lee’s recent paintings harken back to Y2K, an era on the cusp of immense technological and social change as personal computers, mobile phones, and the internet became more widely available, spawning the social media platforms we still use today—albeit profoundly changed since they first emerged. 

Find more on Instagram.

From National Geographic, a true story.

”The famous Italian diver Enzo Maiorca dove into the sea of Syracuse and was talking to his daughter Rossana who was aboard the boat. Ready to go in, he felt something slightly hit his back. He turned and saw a dolphin. Then he realized that the dolphin did not want to play but to express something. The animal dove and Enzo followed.

At a depth of about 12 meters, trapped in an abandoned net, there was another dolphin. Enzo quickly asked his daughter to grab the diving knives. Soon, the two of them managed to free the dolphin, which, at the end of the ordeal, emerged, issued an "almost human cry" (describes Enzo). (A dolphin can stay under water for up to 10 minutes, then it drowns.)

The released dolphin was helped to the surface by Enzo, Rosana and the other dolphin. That’s when the surprise came: she was pregnant!

The male circled them, and then stopped in front of Enzo, touched his cheek (like a kiss), in a gesture of gratitude and then they both swam off.

Enzo Maiorca ended his speech by saying: “Until man learns to respect and speak to the animal world, he can never know his true role on Earth." ~ Vangelis.”

 

  

 

A 6+  minute video, La Luna, here.

 

 

 

  

 

Just because ...

black-naped pheasant-pigeon

 

Sunday's Smiles ...