Jared Deery – A Liminal Light

Freight + Volume is excited to present “A Liminal Light” – an exhibition of recent paintings by Jared Deery, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Jared Deery’s most recent paintings are dramatizations of the act of seeing. Depicting still lifes, often with potted plants acting as a sort of cynosure, Deery maps out how the organicity of flowers can curate an environment around them. The paintings not only attract viewers, but reframe the meaning of space as they find themselves situated closer to or father away from the branching growths Deery has carefully arranged into his pictures.

While sometimes modeled on actual species of flowers, and mindful of the connotations different flowers have, Deery’s work generally derive more from the imagination than perception. Even the convention of the Still Life, conceived as a naturalistic recreation of carefully arranged objects, comes to life in his work more like an artifact reanimated by the synesthetic charm he casts over each picture. The key to this transformative act lies in the furtive animation underlying Deery’s deeply vibrant depictions. Often indicated in the title of a work, each flower displayed is in a state of transition. Caught in the flux of a crepuscular moment, in the liminal stretch of a certain time of day, or in the continual pull of a specific season, Deery’s work transcribes the fluid pulse of awareness as it settles on the the dynamic nexus formed by a living efflorescence.

In a work like “Evening Flower with Rounded Windows”, what might seem like a naturalistic, albeit brightly amplified interior scene, takes on a different tone when one views the painting more closely. The smooth surface gives way to layered textures; and the integral feel of the work, when viewed from afar, gives way to a kind of polarity where the leaves of the flower depicted appear more solidified and real than the environing dimensions that contain it. Another work, “Everything Moves”, has a similar effect: patterns give way to more mosaic-like gestures that body forth the contours of a livid flower. Here, the efflorescence depicted is an eye-catching red: an alluring hue which measures the surface of petals that almost seem mournful as they droop.

Deery’s flower arrangements are poised in a solarium of liminal space. They’re stand-ins for a Romantic imagination that inserts itself into fissures of perceptual realism. Reaching into the past, or toward the future, their composition gestures to something more than one would encounter by simply looking at flowers perched on a windowsill. The way Deery’s coruscating palette mimics the liminal qualities of natural growth suggests that a sense of mystery, or wonder, may be just as important as knowledge. Through the translucent dimensions carved out around his flowers, viewers grasp the subtle BEING of plants as they occupy space.

Jared C. Deery received his BFA with honors in 2001 from Pratt Institute and his MFA at Hunter College in 2009. Born in Philadelphia in 1980, Deery moved to New York in 1997. His work has been exhibited in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Milan and Berlin. He has participated in the Salone del Mobile in Italy and the Saint-Etienne Design Biennale in France. He is in private collections in New York, Chicago, Denver, Japan and Italy. This is his second solo exhibition with Freight + Volume.

Gallery hours Tue-Sat 11 am – 6 pm

Exhibition Duration 25 January – 24 February 2024

www.freightandvolume.com

Location:
Freight + Volume
39 Lispenard St.
10013 New York, NY
United States