Past Exhibitions

Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:)

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.

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

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In the Store

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

A view of five abstract paintings hung in a special wedge-shaped space in the Wexner Center galleries lit only with ultraviolet light. A large yellow canvas hangs near the ceiling while four smaller monochrome red, blue, and green canvases hang at eye level.

Installation view of Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:) at the Wexner Center.

A view of three abstract paintings hung in a special wedge-shaped space in the Wexner Center galleries lit only with ultraviolet lights, visibly hanging from the ceiling.

Installation view of Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:) at the Wexner Center.

Two green canvases with mottled looking surfaces hang side by side in the Wexner Center's galleries lit only with ultraviolet light

Installation view of Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:) at the Wexner Center.

Three blue abstract canvases with gray and black markings hang on a trapezoid shaped wall in the Wexner Center galleries; a metal and glass wall is in the background and a blonde wood floor is visible in the foreground

Installation view of Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:) at the Wexner Center.

An assortment of Humphries's protest paintings lean against a white wall of the Wexner Center galleries; most of them are fashioned in the shape of a placard with the handles facing upward. Most of the canvases are abstract monochromes in pastel colors with darker brushstrokes marking their surfaces. A tall monochrome pink canvas at the left bears several faint Wex word marks embossed in its impastoed surface.

Installation view of Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:) at the Wexner Center.

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.

Installation view of Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:) at the Wexner Center.

An abstract painting that places a red field in a blue square with what appears to be blue spraypaint on the right half. Some of the paint is rendered in dots, like a halftone print or benday dots.

Jacqueline Humphries, Untitled, 2016. Oil and enamel on linen, 114 x 127 in. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. © Jacqueline Humphries. Photo: Jason Mandella.

What appears to be a wooden sign on a post covered in flourescent pink paint stands on its head in the corner of a dark room with purple walls

Jacqueline Humphries, Sign, 2019. Pigmented epoxy resin, 32 1/4 x 12 x 1 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. © Jacqueline Humphries. Photo: Jason Mandella.

A gray square abstract painting with a blue shape outlined by dripping paint at its center; the shape is overlaid with X and O shapes rendered in black paint as well as omega and smiley face computer characters.

Jacqueline Humphries, Two Cat, 2016. Oil on linen, 100 x 111 in. Private collection. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. © Jacqueline Humphries. Photo: Jason Mandella.

The painter Jacqueline Humphries stands against a white wall with a canvas to her left and a ladder and bits of text pasted to wall at her right

Jacqueline Humphries at her studio in Red Hook, 2021. © Jacqueline Humphries. Photo: Martha Fleming-Ives.

Related Material

More about the artist chevron-down chevron-up

Jacqueline Humphries lives and works in New York City. The artist’s recent solo exhibitions include presentations at Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2020); Dia Bridgehampton, New York (2019); Greene Naftali, New York (2017, 2015, 2012); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2015); and Contemporary Art Center (2015) and Prospect.1 in New Orleans (2008). Humphries was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; among many others.

More about the curator chevron-down chevron-up

Mark Godfrey is a curator and critic based in London. From 2007 to 2021 he was senior curator at Tate Modern, where he curated and cocurated shows including Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963–1983 and retrospectives of Sigmar Polke, Roni Horn, Franz West, and Gerhard Richter. Outside Tate he has curated exhibitions by Christopher Williams, David Hammons, R. H. Quaytman, and Laura Owens. He won the Absolut Art Award for art writing in 2015 and recently coedited The Soul of a Nation Reader.

More about the catalogue chevron-down chevron-up

A major catalogue featuring essays by Godfrey, Courtney J. Martin, Jenny Nachtigall, and Johanna Burton will be published in spring 2022. Designed by Studio Markus Weisbeck and copublished by Gregory R. Miller & Co. and the Wexner Center for the Arts, this extensively illustrated catalogue will offer an up-close view of Humphries’s recent practice.

Organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and curated by Mark Godfrey with assistance from Associate Curator of Exhibitions Daniel Marcus and Curatorial Associate Kristin Helmick-Brunet. Organizational support for the exhibition is provided by Greene Naftali, New York; Modern Art, London; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne.

THIS PRESENTATION MADE POSSIBLE BY
Girlfriend Fund
Greene Naftali, New York

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR THIS PRESENTATION PROVIDED BY
Agnes Gund
Anonymous
Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins
Council for Canadian American Relations
Sandra and Leo DelZotto
Joyce and Chuck Shenk
Lisa Stein and Craig Colvin
Nancy and Dave Gill
Jack Cayre

EXHIBITIONS MADE POSSIBLE BY
Bill and Sheila Lambert
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Crane Family Foundation
Mike and Paige Crane

FREE SUNDAYS POWERED BY
American Electric Power Foundation

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
The Wexner Family
Greater Columbus Arts Council
The Columbus Foundation
Ohio Arts Council
American Electric Power Foundation
Adam Flatto
Mary and C. Robert Kidder
Bill and Sheila Lambert
L Brands Foundation
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Nationwide Foundation
Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease
Arlene and Michael Weiss

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Carol and David Aronowitz
Michael and Paige Crane
Pete Scantland
Axium Packaging
Bocchi Laboratories
Fenwick & West LLP
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams
President Kristina M. Johnson and Mrs. Veronica Meinhard
KDC/ONE
Nancy Kramer
M/I Homes
Voyant Beauty
Huntington
Lisa Barton
Regina Miracle International Ltd.
Washington Prime Group
Alene Candles
Fuel Transport
Russell and Joyce Gertmenian
Liza Kessler and Greg Henchel
Matrix Psychological Services
Paramount Group, Inc.
Ron and Ann Pizzuti
Joyce and Chuck Shenk
Bruce and Joy Soll
Clark and Sandra Swanson
Business Furniture Installations
CASTO
E.C. Provini Co, Inc.
Garlock Printing & Converting
Jones Day
M-Engineering
New England Development
Our Country Home
Performance Team
Premier Candle Corporation
ProAmpac
Steiner + Associates
Textile Printing
Andrew and Amanda Wise

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Past Exhibitions

Jacqueline Humphries: jHΩ1:)