Jennie C. Jones: Constant Structures

View the virtual exhibition here

Nearly thirty years after completing her degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, artist Jennie C. Jones returns to the city for a solo exhibition of a new body of work at The Arts Club of Chicago. 

In her first institutional solo presentation in the city, Jennie C. Jones has launched an entirely new body of work that incorporates the space of exhibition in innovative ways, expanding her characteristic visual vocabulary into the parameters of the room.

Lingering at the intersection of music theory, painting, and sound, Jones draws on the concept of “constant structure”—a term borrowed from Modern jazz composition. It refers to a consecutive chord progression with different root notes that links disparate tones into a cohesive entity. Like the intervals of jazz then, Jones’s new acoustic panel paintings, works on paper, and site-specific gestures, hit moments of dissonance and harmony through serial repetition and variation. 

Jones has made her mark since the 1990s by bringing the context of African American music history to bear upon the legacy of geometric abstraction and minimalist form. The works included here depart from the characteristic muted gray palette of the last decade, and begin to draw upon new hues made available by a specialty acoustic textile manufacturer. Working with a set of given materials and colors, Jones frees her forms to address poetic ideas about a personal version of Synesthesia—the melding of vision and hearing.

A publication with an experimental text by author and poet Fred Moten and a forward by Executive Director and Chief Curator Janine Mileaf will accompany the exhibition. 
 

Image: Jennie C. Jones, Corner Phrase / Soft Measure, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 2 parts 12 x 36 and 48 x 36 inches.