Jacqueline Humphries
Jacqueline Humphries, 41/14, 2014 and Untitled, 2014 (installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). Collection of the artist; courtesy Greene Naftali Gallery, New York. Photograph by Bill Orcutt
Born 1960 in New Orleans, LA
Lives and Works in New York, NY
Over three decades Jacqueline Humphries has committed to abstraction at its extreme. In the mid-2000s she began experimenting with reflective silver paint on canvas, a characteristic that has since become a signature of her work. Humphries’s iridescent surfaces create an unsettling relationship between the viewer and the painting, constantly shifting according to movement and time. Registering the colors and tones of their surroundings, the paintings present a mysterious play of shadows and light, suggestion and intimation. She has noted that one of her objectives is to make a work that never feels complete to a viewer. Humphries's mark-making techniques serve her preference for the image to remain unresolved—she applies pigments one on top of another and then scrapes them away to reveal an enigmatic, layered picture plane. Describing her process, Humphries has said, “I start a painting by finishing it, then may proceed to unfinish it, make holes in it or undo it in various ways, as a kind of escape from that finitude.”
On View
Fourth Floor
Jacqueline Humphries’s work is on view in the Museum’s fourth floor galleries.
