Jared Owens

Malin Gallery is pleased to present 111... and Other Stories, an exhibition of recent work by Jared Owens. Owens' first solo exhibition in New York, the show features 21 paintings, two freestanding sculptures and a large scale wall sculpture. 111... and Other Stories is Owens' inaugural exhibition with Malin Gallery.

The selection of paintings presented in 111... and Other Stories is drawn from five distinct series: 111; Shadow Boxing; The Go Back; Ellapsium; and Hog Feed. Many of the works contain soil that Owens gradually collected over three years from the prison yard of the Fairington Federal Correctional Institute and smuggled home. The soil is cut with sand and suspended in pigment, which Owens uses to literally build the surface of the paintings, while other materials are collaged to disrupt the continuum of his images. In addition to the collected soil, Owens' material lexicon includes fragments of parachute cloth, prison bed sheets, recycled materials from his own discarded paintings, burlap feed bags and steel mesh.

The nine new 111 paintings in the exhibition depict hundreds of figures that move in and out of focus amidst exquisite color fields, each with an “X” disruptively wrought across the center of the canvas - as if to negate or cancel out what lies beneath. In the Shadow Boxing series, row upon row of figures are suspended in saturated layers of oil or acrylic wash. These figures are constrained and divided by the blocks of color that define the boundaries encompassing them. Cadmium orange features prominently, referencing its status as a warning color within the prison system to demarcate inaccessible areas and its use for clothing issued to those in strict segregation.

Stripped of individual character, Owens’ shadow figures are imprinted onto the surface of his paintings using a linoleum cut that is repetitively stamped. Their appearance conjures the silhouettes on ancient Greek terracotta funerary krater vessels, while also alluding to the blackened figures of the “Brookes” slave ship diagram, which was widely circulated in print by British abolitionists at the end of the 18th century. To Owens, the shadow figures in his paintings also symbolize the millions of women and men in the carceral system—as well as members of other marginalized communities today—whose individuality is obscured and often rendered invisible.

The title of the Go Back series refers to an experience that is familiar to anyone who has been incarcerated, wherein the general population is abruptly recalled to cells from the yard with the order: "Go Back." Each painting in the series graphically depicts large open spaces above the imposing ubiquity of a wall or building with a towering oculus and a mass of figures in motion. Where the sky meets the concrete is the carceral equivalent of the horizon. The skies suggest freedom, while the enclosed yards embody a strictly constrained manifestation of nature.

Jared Owens (b. 1968, Queens, NY) currently lives and works in New York. Owens' recent exhibitions include Chosen Family at Martos Gallery, NY (2021); SHAG Right of Return, Spring Hills Arts Gathering, New Preston, CT (2021); Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (2020 - 2021) at MoMA PS1, NY, which traveled to the Abroms-Engle Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham, AL (2021); the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, OH (2022); and the List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, RI. Owens participated in Rendering Justice at the African American Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA (2021); The O.G. Experience in partnership with HBO and SOZE, New York, NY (2019); Made in America: Unfree Labor in the Age of Mass Incarceration at Hampshire College, Amherst, MA (2017); Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrichalian Poets at Morian Gallery, Lexington, KY (2017). Based in Charleston, SC, from 2015 - 2021, Owens showed at the Mitchell Hill Gallery. His 2015 exhibition was part of the annual Spoleto Arts Festival. Owens inaugural exhibition, a joint show with artist Jesse Krimes, was shown at Little Berlin Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, while both artists were still incarcerated.

In 2022, Owens was awarded an Art for Justice Fellowship. He has twice received a fellowship from the Silver Arts Program at the World Trade Center in New York (2021 - 2022). Other fellowships include Right of Return (2022); Restorative Justice from Philadelphia Mural Arts (2019); and Eastern State Penitentiary (2016 - 2017).