Janet Jones
"Janet Jones" by Nell Tenhaaf, Spring 2007, p. 102
Janet Jones’s paintings are a sensory delight. They appear to be composed of forms that are tightly constrained, but then expand beyond this immediate experience to offer a full visual effect that is very physical. Volumes push out into the viewer’s space from the dark linear shapes that seem to hold them, moving both toward us and also laterally across the canvases, generating an almost magical optical effect. The paintings oscillate between two kinds of spaces—one geometrical, the other soft—which can be held simultaneously in view through a gorgeous interplay of deep blacks and muted colour, and in meticulous striations of matte and glossy finishes.
This happens in different ways. Three large DaDa Flow paintings employ a vertical geometry that suggests the intimidating positive and negative spaces of skyscraper arrays; Nowhere, Everywhere #4 and #6, however, are in panoramic format, like very unreal landscapes. The edges of all of the canvases are painted in bold colours, so that looking at them from either side or from above (if possible) again alters what is seen. Four smaller works all entitled Solo are more atmospheric explorations.
In the large paintings, the small crosshairs, ellipses, circles and zig-zag lines that float on top of the primary shapes are puzzling at first. Appearing to hover above the surface, they don’t seem integrated with the apparent structure in the works. They are almost irritating: one has to look either at them or past them. Patterns and forms become apparent through the process of concentrating on seemingly extraneous details—a steadied gaze that leads to a looking askance. The strategy is reminiscent of other optical tactics, such as anamorphosis or trompe l’oeil, but because of the suggestion of targets and diagrams in Jones’s small marks, the optics here make reference more to ideas of surveillance than to the curiosities of perspective.
Although the work is essentially abstract, it is not about absolutes but is instead speculative and provocative. Jones has spoken of an interest in rendering a techno-sublime; the perceptual multiplication in these works leads there, and also to a state that is as ironic as it is beautiful.
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