Past Exhibitions

Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:)

Info & Tickets

A view of three large abstract canvases hanging in the Wexner Center's galleries, with one canvas with red brushstrokes in the foreground and a green painting and multicolored painting in the background. The walls are white, the floors are wood and dark marble, and there is a glass and steel wall to the right.

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Sep 18, 2021–Jan 02, 2022

Galleries

ADMISSION
Free for advocate and ambassador members, college students (with valid ID), patrons under 18, active military, and veterans
$7 senior citizens (65 and older), Ohio State faculty and staff (with BuckID)
$9 general public

All visitors are admitted to the exhibition for free on Thursdays after 4 PM and on Sundays courtesy of American Electric Power Foundation. The exhibition is closed on Mondays.

Please note: due to university guidelines on the COVID-19 pandemic, we have reduced capacity in our galleries and face coverings will be required in all areas of the center. We strongly recommend you purchase tickets online in advance of your visit and limit the items you bring with you. Tickets are also available at the Visitor Experience Desk on our entrance level or by calling (614) 292-3535 when the building is open.

You will be asked to check backpacks, large purses and other large bags, and umbrellas before entering the galleries. Click here for full list of policies, including items prohibited in the galleries; click here for more about the center’s COVID-19 safety protocols. With uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, program dates are subject to change.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation such as captioning or ASL interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Accessibility Manager Helyn Marshall at accessibility@wexarts.org or via telephone at (614) 688–3890. Requests made by two weeks in advance will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the Wexner Center for the Arts will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

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This fall, the Wexner Center will devote its galleries to the first large-scale museum exhibition of vanguard abstract painter Jacqueline Humphries.

A maverick figure in New York’s downtown scene, Humphries has reworked and revitalized the language of abstract painting over a career that has covered four decades and multiple transformations in style. The Wex’s presentation will focus on the past seven years, highlighting the importance of digital communications and online culture to Humphries’s evolving practice. Guest curated by Mark Godfrey, the exhibition features dozens of paintings, including a new multipanel installation—her largest to date—created in response to the center’s iconic postmodernist architecture.

Incorporating the QWERTY keyboard as a means of generating abstract form, some paintings feature emoticons, emoji, kaomoji, and CAPTCHA. Humphries produces others by scanning her earlier works, translating them into ASCII character code, and using stencils created from the results as the basis for new paintings.

The exhibition will also feature Humphries’s recent work exploring the visual language of corporate logos; her black light paintings, made with fluorescent paints to be presented in a darkened space; and a selection of protest sign paintings. These invoke art’s long history as a medium of dissent as well as the uprisings that have increasingly shaped modern politics. For this presentation, Humphries, Godfrey, and the Wex team have fixed on and multiplied the wedge shape of architect Peter Eisenman’s design of the center, creating semidiscrete galleries within galleries.

Watch wexarts.org for further details about upcoming programs, including a fall exhibition opening (September 17) featuring a conversation between Humphries and guest curator Mark Godfrey; a free talk by Godfrey titled “Where Does Art Lie?” (October 4); and a performative dialogue between Humphries and artist and writer Felix Bernstein (October 27).

ABOVE
Jacqueline Humphries
jHΩ1:), 2018 (detail)
Oil on linen
114 x 127 in.
The Abrishamchi Family Collection
Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
© Jacqueline Humphries
Photo: Jason Mandella

In the Store

Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:) exhibition catalogue

"Few painters today engage with the challenges of new technology as persuasively as Jacqueline Humphries."

New York Times

An abstract painting covered with a complex striped background overlaid with red brushstrokes and twisted CAPTCHA characters that read jHΩ1:)

Jacqueline Humphries, jHΩ1:), 2018. Oil on linen, 114 x 127 in. The Abrishamchi Family Collection. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. © Jacqueline Humphries. Photo: Jason Mandella.