Heliotrope

Color invites familiarity, but as Josef Albers states, If one says 'Red' and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.

When you enter the space, you will notice the window too large to fit the room and a triangular mass cut out of the ceiling to bring in an abundance of light. The sky is also part of the room, as is the building across the street and the people walking by on the sidewalk below. You will begin to understand what exists in the room, why it is here, how it is made, if you consider its interaction with the sun. When the sun goes down, shadows fill the room; what was once familiar, needs now to be relearned.

All this geometry (of objects, architecture, light): a quiet and simple complexity that ushers in the world.

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Pamela Jorden’s paintings are composed of fragments, accumulations of shape, line, texture, and pattern which form varying optical densities. The paintings are influenced by her day-to-day surroundings; she often uses her observations of changing light during the day, the shifting of perspectives as one moves through space, and the dense layered appearance of the Los Angeles landscape stacked and compressed in haze and smog. Jorden’s process is experimental—she lays down initial marks and then responds to them—creating an improvisational surface throughout the work. Her mark making engages texture, gesture, mass, and scale.

Pamela Jorden received her BFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (1992) and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California (1996). Jorden has had solo exhibitions at Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York, NY); Romer Young Gallery (San Francisco, CA); David Patton Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA), Mason Gross Art Gallery, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ). Selected group exhibitions include Around Flat, Knockdown Center (Maspeth, NY); NOW-ISM: Abstraction Today at the Pizzuti Collection (Columbus, Ohio); Alice Konitz, Pamela Jorden, Jeff Ono at Samuel Freeman Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Forms of Abstraction at the Irvine Fine Arts Center (Irvine, CA. A new monograph, Pamela Jorden 2004-2014, with an essay by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer and a conversation with Kaveri Nair and Alice Könitz has recently been released through Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery and Black Dog Publishing. Jorden lives and works in Los Angeles.

John Pearson received a MFA from California Institute of the Arts and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited widely in the United States including garages, non-profits, artist collectives, museums, and commercial galleries in Los Angeles along with solo exhibitions in New York; Saint Petersburg, Russia; and a two-person exhibit with Emily Newman at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Recent collaborations include videos for Gabie Strong’s sound performances.