Heather Guertin

JDJ is thrilled to present Heather Guertin’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, and her first at JDJ Tribeca.

Awash in color and texture, Guertin’s intricate oil paintings are derived from images she finds in discarded books. It is the formal quality, rather than the content, that compels her to choose this imagery as inspiration for her paintings.

Guertin is particularly drawn to photographs that appear to reference abstraction: closely cropped figures, allusions to the fluidity of oil paint within reflections of water, or the extreme level of detail found in microscopic sea life. Representing a range of subjects, the photographs that attract her often come from reference books produced after 1980 when color printing is at its brightest and most saturated.

Guertin splices several of the found photographs or illustrations into one composition, visually stitching or blending strips of them together, like an exquisite corpse, rather than cutting out and pasting particular elements from each.

Irrational juxtapositions within these collages create strange hybridities. Guertin approaches painting with a sense of openness, searching for her paintings through the material she comes across. She allows the found imagery to guide the form, color and value in the painting, but her singular vision pushes these fragments into new worlds. The possibilities for Guertin are infinite and the process is dynamic, united by her subjectivity and painterly approach.

Guertin manipulates the paint in highly textured ways, turning realistic subject matter into abstraction through her brushwork: large, thick swoops of oil paint and tiny raised dots on top of fields of color, a reference to the printing mechanics of the found images.

The resulting works are, in essence, an act of transformation, as she filters the collages through her own painterly vision. Some aspects of the original images are retained, and others take on new forms. Just as Guertin’s painting process is an act of translation, so too is our visual read of her paintings: her abstract compositions convey a sense of recognizability, though not necessarily to the original source.

Heather Guertin (b. 1981, Worcester, MA) lives and works in Red Hook, NY. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Guertin has recently exhibited at JDJ the Ice House, Garrison, NY, Broadway Gallery, New York, Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, presented with Galería Agustina Ferreyra, Brennan & Griffin, New York, Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City, Flag Art Foundation, New York, Bortolami, New York, and Galería Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Guertin has performed at White Columns, New York and the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA. Her work was acquired by the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection earlier this year. Guertin’s novella Model Turned Comedian with Social Malpractice and Publication Studio was acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp in 2013, and her monograph was published by Hassla Books in 2015.