Harper’s is thrilled to announce Our House, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Brooklyn-based artist JJ Manford. The show will present a new series of work that continues Manford’s practice of rendering vibrant domestic interiors with oil stick, pastel, and Flashe paint. Concurrent with Felix Art Fair, Our House opens on Friday, February 18, 6–8pm, at the gallery's Los Angeles location, with a reception attended by the artist.
Although the paintings on view feature a wide array of private interiors—city lofts, suburban homes, and rural cabins—there is nonetheless a common sensibility that permeates each piece. Manford depicts rooms with tidily arranged antique furniture and decorated objects in vivid colors. Canonical and invented artworks populate the walls, and ornately patterned rugs line the hardwood floors; a Sonic the Hedgehog figurine rests atop a mid-century end table in Interior with Sonic & JJ Manford Rug while a ceramic Elvis lamp resides next to an abstract landscape painting in E.M.'s Piano & Elvis Lamp. In some instances, such as Bedroom with A.R. Penck and Interior with Alfredo Volpi & Zebra Rug, pet cats curl up on plush cushions or wrinkled bed sheets while the gentle glow of twilight peers through the windows, accentuating the serene atmosphere. Despite the lack of human presence, the scenes in Our House take on an inviting mood, as if the illustrated spaces were personalized for the viewer's own virtual habitation. Here, Manford's audience is essentially his guest.
In contrast to the quasi-surreal motifs Manford presented in his first exhibition with the gallery, View From Gowanus, the work in this recent series is more straightforward and deadpan. Primarily painting on large linen and burlap supports—many at or near bodily scale—Manford accurately portrays linear perspective to play into the illusory sense that his pictures could be physically entered. Yet, his imagery continues to retain a dreamlike quality through highly saturated palettes, exaggerating the intensity of color relationships experienced in the empirical world. As Manford remarks on his technique, “I have found that suspending aggregated dashes of pigment atop shifting grounds of color enlivens the surface of the painting in a way that mimics the non-static and approximate nature of light.” Through his chromatically charged arrangements, which pulse and glow from within, Manford creates a satisfying tension between his tranquil scenes and dynamic compositions. The domestic interiors in Our House bring to life the snapshot-like nature of nostalgia and memory.
JJ Manford (b. 1983, Boston, MA) received a BFA from Cornell University in 2006, a post-Baccalaureate certificate from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, and an MFA from Hunter College in 2013. Most recently, his work has been featured in solo presentations at Harper’s, East Hampton (2021); Derek Eller Gallery, New York (2021 and 2019); and John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY (2016 and 2012). A catalog, Greenport Magic, accompanied an exhibition of the same title at Arts + Leisure Gallery, New York, in 2017. Manford has participated in group exhibitions at Harper’s, Los Angeles (2021); The Pit, Palm Springs (2021); 1969 Gallery, New York (2020); Alexander Berggruen, New York (2020); and Freight + Volume, New York (2018 and 2015), among other venues. Reviews of his work have appeared in numerous publications including New Yorker, Artnet News, and White Hot Magazine. Manford currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY where he is a co-founder of the artist collective Underdonk.