J. Parker Valentine

Cut-Outs-Inter-Sections
2011/01/29

Although J. Parker Valentine uses varied visual means including film, photography, collage and sculpture, her central medium and the core of all her practice is drawing. The artist’s entire production is linked to the intrinsic qualities of the sign, the immediacy of gesture, and a tension created by the joining of and passage from one language to another. Abstraction thus exists not simply as a stylistic code, but goes beyond mere form to become the subject of the work, reflecting personal histories and both artistic and cultural inheritances. For Cut-Outs-Inter-Sections, a new project specifically conceived for Peep-Hole exhibition space, Valentine cut out forms from the drop cloth of another artist, spattered and marked in paint, that become the most vital components of a large wall drawing in the first room.

The memory of these found objects merges with a minimal and discontinuous intervention of enigmatic lines, alluding to an interrupted narrative. Her typical drawings on MDF, usually fragments cut from larger compositions, which precariously lean against the wall, reside on the fine boundary between the two-dimensionality of drawing and the three dimensionality of an object. In the second room of Peep-Hole the artist used leftover MDF panels from another show as a table-like object that, in turn, becomes a support for other works on paper. Within this work, different iconographies intersect, interact, and coincide, where not every constituent is fully visible, but becomes whole.

J. Parker Valentine was born in 1980 in Austin, Texas. She lives and works in New York and Austin. Her recent solo shows took place at Supportico Lopez in Berlin (ongoing), Taka Ishii Gallery in Kyoto (2010) and Lisa Cooley Gallery in New York (2010, 2008). Among group shows: Organic Relationships, The Center for Cosmic Wonder, Tokyo (2010); Substance Abuse, Leo Koenig Inc., New York (2010); Christopher Orr & J. Parker Valentine & Rezi van Lankveld, Front Room, Contemporary Arts Museum, St. Louis, Missouri (2009); If the Dogs are Barking, Artists Space, New York (2009); Creswell Crags, Lisa Cooley Gallery, New York (2008).

01. J. Parker Valentine
Untitled, 2010
Mixed media, nails, graphite on wall. Dimensions variable
Exhibition view, Peep-Hole, Milano

02. J. Parker Valentine
Untitled, 2010 (detail)
Mixed media, nails, graphite on wall. Dimensions variable

03. J. Parker Valentine
Untitled, 2010 (detail)
Mixed media, nails, graphite on wall. Dimensions variable

04. J. Parker Valentine
Untitled, 2010 (detail)
Mixed media, nails, graphite on wall. Dimensions variable

05. J. Parker Valentine
Untitled, 2010
Ink, graphite, colored pencil, chalk, blush, collage, tape, glue, paper, fabric, mdf, easels

06. J. Parker Valentine
Untitled, 2010 (detail)
Ink, graphite, colored pencil, chalk, blush, collage, tape, glue, paper, fabric, mdf, easels

07. J. Parker Valentine
Front: Untitled, 2010 (detail). Ink, graphite, colored pencil, chalk, blush, collage, tape, glue, paper, fabric, mdf, easels
Rear: Untitled, 2010, ink, graphite, colored pencil on paper. 25x34 cm (35x44 cm with frame)

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