Jan Gatewood
Discrepancy Essence
March 29 - April 29, 2023

PRESS RELEASE

In his first New York solo exhibition, Discrepancy Essence, Los Angeles based artist Jan Gatewood is showing eight new works on paper that locate themselves near the intersection of drawing, painting and collage. In addition to the works on paper he has made over one hundred free artworks that are scattered across the floor of the gallery. Using an eclectic array of materials, ranging from oil pastel and fabric-dye to palo santo ash or debris, Jan Gatewood explores image-making with wit, language and technical play. 

Through self-imposed rules and repetition, he renders animal characters in a manner that oscillates in between playfulness and realism, set against abstract backgrounds of splashes, splatters, stamps and smears. In the drawing Her name is Misery… The Marriage of process and the final product, a little pig in overalls is laboriously swinging a hammer within a pool of dark red smudges, glitter, and pieces of broomsticks, covering the paper like a crime scene. Other materials like bleach and salt are poured and sprinkled, blueberries squeezed and daubed over the paper. Oil stick is meticulously dapped with cotton swabs, while fabric-dye is applied with fingers, pieces of bok choy, or Gatewood’s own hair - never with a brush. By employing glue as a tool to break apart the images, Gatewood embeds material and gestural abstraction into a reciprocal play of chance and control, making himself respond to his own moves. 

The contradicting layers of figuration and abstraction, innocence and force, chaos and control, constantly approximate and fully dissolve in the drawing Chopped and patient narratives of the present, told in many voices. In this work, an image of Gatewood’s deceased dog Puff is intertwined with the words “the death of the imagination because what else is paralysis” - a quote taken from the 1993 film, Six Degrees of Separation. Intersecting discrepancies of background and foreground that extend beyond a formal context, Gatewood’s unique techniques reverse orders in its essence, cutting paper with glue.  

Jan Gatewood (b.1994 in Aurora, CO)  lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He has had solo exhibitions at Smart Objects (Los Angeles)  and has been included in various group exhibitions, among them ‘Group Shoe Two’ at Public Access (New York) ‘Peel’ at Europa (New York), ‘Best in Show’ at Jack Hanley Gallery (New York) and  ‘Vivid’ organized by Sonya Sombreuil as part of ‘Made in L.A. 2020’, Hammer Museum (Los Angeles).