J P 제피 | Featured Artist
June 29, 2019
J P 제피 (formerly known as Jen Pack) is a bicultural and bigender artist, color explorer, tree climber, and truthseeker who has created home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. S(he) challenges dominant narratives and creates inceptive spaces in a practice of spiritual activism and exploration of the porous relationship between truth, beauty, and identity. (He)r work has been described as an artistic oxymoron: both loud and quiet, solid and transparent, hand-made and precise, delicate and aggressive, exuberant and restrained, formal and emotional. It is a reflection of J P, an artist of blended culture who is both loud and quiet, urban and rural, delicate and aggressive, masculine and feminine, adventurous and routine.
The interweaving of contrasts, oppositions, or normative coloration is the driving impulse of the work. Evolution of the work relies heavily on an embrace and cultivation of uncertainty and the activity of intense seeing. The work embodies a space in the seam between painting and sculpture, yet is made of fabric. It is made of small distinct pieces, reordered and fused, which become a new whole based on their orientation to each other; yet, each small bit still retains its integrity.
This is why the works are collages rather than creations; the color is already speaking, it is the ordering and placement (or displacement) that allows them to sing. Each color is activated by surrounding hues and is most vibrant when in stark contrast in tone, shade, or intensity to neighboring chroma. A color’s inherent brilliance is intensified when dissonant and inconsistent with adjacent pigmentation. These moments are also when remarkable visual occurrences can occur: glow, radiation, melting, luminosity, transformation, singing. The work is in-between: it celebrates the purity of abstract form while daring to exist with zeal.
"Through an interdisciplinary practice as an artist and spiritual activist, I explore light and color in an ontological space in the materiality of fabric and thread, works on paper, site-specific installation, and performance and present stories of ritual integration and spiritual journeys. I work with abstraction and symbol as a gateway into indistinct territories where stories dance and map vibrating fields and imagery from the seenfelt energy of other realms. It is a portal-window into my relationship with spirit allies, the land, somatic insight, and informed by my bicultural heritage and bigender spirit."
J P's interdisciplinary practice is truly inspiring, as it seeks to explore light, color, fabric, thread, site-specific installation and performance in a unique way. It speaks to a bicultural and bigendered state, and how to navigate the liminality of this world and beyond.
It is a reflection of the struggle for safety, of synthesizing tensions and collapsing genres, spaces, identities and norms. The work is powerful and has the ability to come off the walls, integrate personal stories and cultural symbols, and inhabit the body. It is an incredible exploration and a reminder of the potential of the human spirit.
J P's fabric constructions are created to allow light to pass through them, combining the effects of ambient light and translucent fabric. Using commercially available rather than hand dyed silk, the works are actually collages arranged from available color. Investigating color theory and the interaction of color is the main function of J P's work. But unlike the typical association of color theory as hard edged, the works are organic rather than clean lined - as are patterns and forms in nature. The work marries the imperfect quality of the handmade with the sameness and regularity of machine stitching. J P strives to integrate hybrid ideas: straddling the fence between craft and art, color theory and the rawness of an emotional response to intense color, and reinterpreting formal minimalism in the context of a feminine convention.
J P's earned her BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, and has exhibited her work in a number of galleries throughout San Los Angeles, and Portland. Her unique works in chiffon have been reviewed by the LA Times and Artweek.
