Jen P. Harris is a process-driven artist working with painting, drawing, textiles, and installation. Balancing an experimental orientation with meticulous attention to craft, they create singular and hybrid objects that complicate received forms and narratives. A selection of works on view stems from Harris’ 2019 encounter with a 13th-century illustrated manuscript in the collection of the Getty Museum.

“My works incorporate the medieval apocalyptic imagery found in this book to address inherited cultural ideas about “the end of the world.” Making these works involved creating ink paintings on paper based on images from the manuscript, cutting these paintings up into small paper tiles using a utility knife, reconfiguring these tiles and gluing them to wood panels. This very literal, physical process of deconstruction results in what I think of as a kind of psychic architecture.” –Jen P. Harris

Much of Sam Dienst’s work is built from her personal detritus. She considers her garbage, clutter, and daily rituals to be a major aspect of inadvertent self expression. She often meditates on the foods, products, and household items that are tangible reflections of her routines. The results are tapestries, collages, and accumulations of her stuff that she has ambivalent feelings towards or strong affective relationships with. The weavings then possess a surreal and anthropomorphic quality that emphasizes the latent energy she sees in her recycling, dishes, and daily objects. The elements may initially seem banal, but they often compound to be major parts of who she is.

“The excess of color also allows ambiguity to form around the objects in the scene, therefore prompting viewers to play a game of discovering objects they recognize alongside the more uncertain forms. Some shapes and objects bring a sense of self-reflection, while others are very light-hearted and comedic. All together, the works are awkward, humorous, chaotic, and fun, descriptions I would also apply to myself.” – Sam Dienst

For Mike Meier, making art is both psychoanalysis and archeology. The dig site is a garbage dump at the end of time. Meier sifts through the trash of history, meddling in the noise of the network, to piece together a narrative of what it means to be here now. His work is conditioned by the histories of political and religious violence as it’s depicted in Art History, Media, and Pop Culture. Images of the Crucifixion, revolution, war, and damnation have conditioned what it means for me to be human and to be an American.

“The subjects of my paintings are inspired by my consumption of mass-produced imagery, such as comic and cartoon tropes, punk and hardcore imagery, and conventions of art history. I play with figures by drawing, re-drawing, painting, cataloging, compositing, and altering to produce satirical, sincere, psychologically, and emotionally charged imagery of my interior space. This interior space is conditioned by my experience; loud and dissonant images representative of the noise of contemporary life. I see my work like a punk song; short bursts of reactionary energy aimed at what angers, inspires, confounds, and exasperates.” –Mike Meier