PRISM: New Works by Jenn Shifflet
FEBRUARY 6 -MARCH 26, 2015
Jenn Shifflet. Breaking Through, 2014, oil on panel, 40 x 48 inches
Oakland, CA Chandra Cerrito Contemporary is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Jenn Shifflet. Shifflet has become known for portraying the subtle interplays of color and shifting light. Her luminous canvases are sprinkled with jewel-like spheres that lure both the eye and the mind into a state of fluidity.
Her new work introduces a set of geometries and pattern that seduce the viewer with kaleidoscope effects. Shifflet’s new 2D works shift the balance from ethereal to material, but never settle long enough to become static. Her paintings hover between movement and stillness, emergence and dissolution, order and illusion. She states that her work explores “the inner dream-like experience of time, fleeting moments of perception, and reflections of the natural world.”
For this exhibition, Shifflet features a new series of sculptures that employ materials such as driftwood, glass, clay, silver and gold leaf, and graphite. They refer back to the artist’s interest in the transformative power of nature marked by time. They also reflect the influence of Shifflet’s experience as a jewelry maker. Both intimate and mysterious, they give us another glimpse into the fragile beauty of Shifflet’s perceptions. As Marcel Proust wrote, “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscape but in having new eyes…”
About the Artist: Jenn Shifflet (b. 1972) received her BA from Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA in 1995 and her MFA from John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, CA in 2004. She was awarded an affiliate residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts from 2004 to 2007. In 2013 was the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Grant Award. Her work has been exhibited nationally since 1988, including at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Rotunda Gallery, Corcoran Gallery and National Cathedral in Washington, DC; Maryland College of Art and Design, Silver Spring, MD; University of California at Santa Cruz; di Rosa, Napa; Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek; Kala Institute, Berkeley; New Langton Arts, San Francisco; Worth Ryder Gallery, UC Berkeley and the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.
