I first saw Jasmine Justice’s work when I was a visiting artist at Rutgers (Fancy). I liked the rough physicality and materiality of her paintings. I especially remember seeing a green painting that had been worked over many times Chloro-fill and a sheet of glass leaning against the wall with clotted, dripping yellow paint Grape Crush -a piece that was hard to call a painting Grit. We spoke during that first meeting about ‘70s experimental abstraction.

I like the way the physicality of her paintings can turn into an image, a doubling that never seems possible, even as one sees it. Looking at the paintings for this show, this doubling reminds me of Gilles Deleuze’s description of crystal-form as a kind of form in which the actual and virtual images are so united one can no longer distinguish which is which. In Jasmine’s paintings this crystal-form is complicated again by being both figurative and abstract.

Her paintings are very theatrical. As proof, she is very good with titles. I wish that I could think of such excellent titles for my paintings. Her paintings seem to have a story behind them. What stories do they make with their doublings and combinations? Why do we want to follow these stories?

-David Reed January 23, 2007