Susan Inglett Gallery is pleased to present Martha Jackson Jarvis: What The Trees Have Seen II, the artists inaugural exhibition with the gallery, on view from 17 October - 30 November 2024. This exhibition is slated to run concurrently with a presentation of the artist at The Art Show 2024. An opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 PM Thursday 17 October 2024.
In What The Trees Have Seen, Jarvis’ recent exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the artist bears witness to her great-great-great-great grandfather's experience as a free Black militia man during the American Revolutionary War. In her large-scale abstract paintings, Jarvis tracks his physical journey through various landscapes, both wild and domestic, embedding the work with constructed memories of a bygone time and place. Jarvis’ practice spans decades and media, from large-scale sculpture and public art installations to works on paper. Among her signature materials is a walnut ink foraged and produced by Jarvis herself, imbuing the work with a raw materiality that is both singular and historically relevant. Along with this practical introduction of the terrestrial, the compositions take visual cues from nature, implementing forms reminiscent of tree roots and waterways as documentation of the networks that connect us to home and one another.
Cycles of generational exchange and storytelling are felt in Jarvis’ use of mandalas as motifs, the symbol holding space in the compositions as a regenerative emblem. The radial pattern, evocative of the sun, ovum or other life-giving, natural forms along with the colorfully abstract painted forms, is occasionally juxtaposed with black and white stripes, suggesting clear paths of travel that are disrupted and overtaken by the unpredictable patterns of nature and circumstance. At the intersection of communal tradition, feminine history, and ecological responsibility, Martha Jackson Jarvis reaches across natural networks and cultural connections to underscore the importance of relationships: the ones we build with ourselves, our communities, and our environments.
MARTHA JACKSON JARVIS (b. 1952, Lynchburg, Virginia. Lives and works in Washington, D.C.) studied at Howard University and received a BFA degree from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and an MFA from Antioch University. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally including a recent solo exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and prior exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Studio Museum of Harlem; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, N.C.; and the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Jarvis has received numerous awards include a Creative Capital Grant, Virginia Groot Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, The Penny McCall Foundation Grant, and the Lila Wallace Arts International Travel Grant. She was the recipient of the 2023 James Porter Colloquium Lifetime Achievement Award, Howard University. Her work can be found in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Philadelphia African American Museum, among others.
PRESS CONTACT: Becket Gourlay press@inglettgallery.com 212.647.9111
