Romer Young Gallery is pleased to present its seventh solo exhibition with Los Angeles painter Pamela Jorden. There will be an opening reception for the artist on Thursday, November 6th from 6:00 - 8:00pm. Holds features an installation of five paintings, experiential in their scale and sculptural form, that are the result of an active and improvisational process. The interlocking sides of the diptychs and optical play of hi-key color within the compositions accentuate tension, physicality, sculptural weight and counterbalance.
Jorden has said that each painting begins with a proposition, what she describes as "an impetus to begin or enter.” The proposition for this new series of paintings might be “not a singular integrity but a union, an integrity of relationships.” Continuing her exploration into dualities and opposing forces, the two sides of the canvas join or push against one another. Forms touch and brace, lean and hold. The paintings are visual representations of chance and improvisation; two physical bodies meet and exist independently, yet in relation to one another in both form and movement. The dynamic contact is also between the artist and the canvas, a relationship that manipulates and builds a shared visual space that has distinct sculptural components. Rather than a seamless union, Jorden’s diptychs offer two perspectives at once, each discrete side protecting the other's need for independence and inner space. It is in this union that viewers can find a hold in the continuum - a pause. Together, the physical shapes hold activity, time, potential, and stillness.
Formally, Jorden plays with the alchemy of paint and how pigments, suspended in water and solvents, move over and across and around, and interweave with the texture of the linen. Flow, gravity, and momentum result in areas of varying densities of opaque and transparent forms. Areas of exposed raw linen appose the saturation and weight of various colors in the paintings, creating balance and ruptures along points of contact within and along edges of the frame. Multiple color chords of paint, layered together, mingle with shape, line, texture and pattern in a synthesis of the whole.
Pamela Jorden (b. 1969, Knoxville, TN) received a BFA from the University of Tennessee (Knoxville, TN) in 1992 and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) in 1996. Jorden's work is the subject of "Light Falls," a book published by Philip Martin Gallery in 2024 and “Pamela Jorden 2004 - 2014,” a monograph published with Klaus von Nichtssagend and Black Dog Editions. Recent solo and group gallery exhibitions include Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York, NY); Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Romer Young Gallery (San Francisco, CA). Museum shows include Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI); Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (Birmingham, AL); University of Redlands Art Gallery (Redlands, CA); Pizzuti Collection (Columbus, OH); and Mason Gross Art Gallery at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ). Jorden's work has been written about in numerous publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Artnews, The Brooklyn Rail, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times.