Jill Downen: Weightless
“I draw with plaster and concrete to shape space that is resistance to naming, representation, or constraint. The space exists to open sensory experience in a mysterious way. The creative process involves ‘not knowing’ - a pathway that tells me I'm somewhere, but I'm unfamiliar with exactly where that is. I am in a state of being. The space holds a palpable presence. It feels like mist, a vast distance, breath, light resting in the air – weightless.”
－Jill Downen
Nunu Fine Art New York is pleased to present Weightless, Jill Downen’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, with works spanning six years of the artist’s career. Downen (b.1967) is an American artist who currently lives and works in Kansas City. The exhibition will feature over thirty wall-hanging plaster and concrete works that Downen refers to as “reimagined drawings.”
Refined by decades of work with large-scale sculptural installations, Downen's ‘drawings’ echo their architectural interventions through a reduced and sophisticated color palette, unconventional techniques, and their seasoned skills with plaster, concrete, lapis lazuli, and gold leaf. Each artwork is made with lath-and-plaster or metal mesh and concrete, evoking the traditional wall construction methods with common building materials. This reference to building alludes to Downen’s longstanding interest in architectural spaces and their psychological nature. A critical event in their formative years, a lightning strike to the family home, imprinted a heightened awareness of the body, architecture, and temporality that would, in time, inform the core of their artistic practice. Downen mines their own emotional capacities to draw out the materials’ potential, resulting in unique plaster textures and smooth concrete surfaces interrupted by discerning lapis lazuli inlays and gold-leafed contours emerging from the grayish-whitish ground base.
Each drawing creates its own abstract space, and together, they orchestrate a reflective and grounding environment conducive to observation and introspection. These spaces are dedicated to the renewal of balance, the recovery of the horizon, and the restoration of equilibrium. Downen's nuanced drawings invite us to cultivate our perception and contemplate with the hope of transcendence. The exhibition invites viewers to a haptic experience with spatial poetry, breathing in and out, to find respite in quiet subtlety. Their conceptual motivation addresses the need for quiet reflection in an uncertain world of rapid change.
Downen's work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO; Oklahoma City Museum of Art, OK; Rosenberg Gallery I Hofstra University, NY; Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN; Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA;University of North Texas, Denton, TX; The Arsenal of Venice, Italy; and Artscape Commons, Toronto, Canada; amongst others. Her residencies include Art Omi: Artists, MASS MoCA, the MacDowell Colony National Endowment for the Arts residency, and Cité International des Arts residency in Paris, France. They are a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Stone and DeGuire Contemporary Art Award, and the Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artists Award. Downen is the Chair of Sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute.
ABOUT JILL DOWNEN
Jill Downen (b.1967) is a non-binary American artist based in Kansas City who works in site-responsive installations, sculpture, and drawing. A critical event in their formative years, a lightning strike to the family home, imprinted a heightened awareness of the body, architecture, and temporality that would, in time, inform the core of their artistic practice. Their work invites people to slow down and heighten awareness of internal and external energies that undergird a contemporary culture in constant flux. Their practice addresses these concerns through the symbiotic relationship between the human body and architecture - where both reside as indeterminate and temporal bodies. Downen has created installations at The Momentary/Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (State of the Art 2020); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; The Oklahoma City Museum of Art; and “Open Spaces: The Exhibition.” Their residencies include Art Omi: Artists, MASS MoCA, MacDowell Colony National Endowment for the Arts residency, and Cité International des Arts residency in Paris, France. Awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, Stone and DeGuire Contemporary Art Award, and the Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artists Award. Downen is the Chair of Sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute.