This show was one of those wonderful discoveries that sometimes happens when you’re walking in the Chelsea gallery district: Something catches your eye, so you walk in. Or, in this case, I’d certainly heard of Kasmin, but hadn’t had occasion to visit. I was coming from another show when I realized where I was.
I didn’t know anything about British transgender artist Jamie Nares (born James Nares in 1953) until I encountered this body of work. According to the bio provided by the gallery:
“Jamie Nares established herself as a fixture among a milieu of avant-garde filmmakers, musicians, and visual artists in downtown New York in the late 1970s, when she co-founded the pioneering New Cinema on Saint Mark’s in 1977 and directed the no wave classic feature film Rome ’78 in 1978. In an effort to expand her artistic achievements, Nares made a conscious decision to redirect her attention to painting in 1982. On an impromptu visit to Egypt with the late critic Edit deAk in 1983, Nares would make her last film before a public hiatus from the medium. She would not shoot another video until 1987 nor another film until 1998. What followed was a sustained, introspective effort to mark controlled passages of time in a variety of media, often on paper.”
And this is important, too:
“By the mid 1980s, Nares frequently turned to wax paper as a preferred support for her compositions. The soft sheen of this paper enabled Nares’ paint to glide across its surface as the artist rendered hands, words, and three-dimensional shapes in oil. The texture of the wax paper would inspire Nares’ curiosity about the possibility of erasing and repeating a mark, a seminal discovery in her painting practice. Nares would soon develop her signature technique of using a squeegee to wipe away a painted mark before applying another to the same support, a practice she began with her momentous brushstroke paintings in 1992 and continues today. Elsewhere on paper, Nares achieved this effect by preparing her support with a ground layer of enamel paint that dried into a glossy surface on which Nares applied, erased, and reapplied strokes of oil paint.”
What I found most compelling was the glossy sheen of the oils. There’s a wetness to them that makes for a rich and intriguing viewing experience. I loved getting up close to these paintings, some of which reminded me of calligraphic marks.
As of this writing, the show ends on Saturday, June 22, so those of you in NYC still have a chance to see it.
Kasmin is located at 297 Tenth Avenue at 27th Street in Chelsea.
