BILL JENKINS LONG ENDING

February 26–April 15, 2012 Opening reception Sunday, February 26, 6–8pm

Bill Jenkins’ sculptures are carefully worked-out problems in which found objects and hand-fabricated elements are held together by a tenuous formal inertia, the simple mechanics of which appear to come easily undone. His chosen materials—a discarded air filter, a lightbulb, an oyster shell, a vent cover, a mattress frame—are remnants of a domestic economy. Flimsy, toxic, saved from the trash or collected after being dejected from it, the objects are no longer of practical importance, instead incarnated into an alternate system of value that is informed by the contact, use, and visibility of vernacular things.

Broadly taking familiar architecture as a medium, fragments, units, and whole spaces are presented as perceptually indeterminate pictures—self-reflexive trompe l’oeils that more firmly instantiate the viewer in the present space, rather than providing the illusion of escape into another. While the materials and simplicity of Jenkins’ work participates in an economy defined by post-minimal and conceptual art, his work establishes its own narrative based on an idiosyncratic investigation of the physicality of objects. An indelible lightness of touch and treatment permeates his work, while the certainty of vision is questioned in moments of transparency and undulations of what is known to be solid. Vision is dotted and blurred, reorganizing and reconnecting what was there all along.

Jenkins has had solo exhibitions at Jancar Jones, San Francisco and was included in group exhibitions at Laurel Gitlen and Feature Inc., New York; and The Suburban, Oak Park, IL, where he will also have a two-person exhibition with Erin Shirreff in June 2012. This is his first solo exhibition in New York.

The gallery is open Wednesday–Sunday, 11–6pm, and by appointment. For more information or images, please contact [email protected], or 212.274.0761.