Even in his curation, there is a movement to the mind and hand of Josh Jefferson. As the curator of our Jux Saturday School series, he can easily move through history with a sense of purpose, even as he jumps from decade to decade, humor to experimentation, absurdity to abstraction. His newest solo show, Double or Nothing, on view at TURN in NYC, shows that Jefferson can move through a canvas or paper work as well, in what they note as "brushwork experimentation and harnessing fluidity."
“This new series was created by using two brushes at the same time," Jefferson told us of the new works. "A new process to start fresh, this approach was a way to get into the painting from the inside out. The paintings at first became an ambidextrous stress test. A type of all around mirror image mask. Through trial and error I arrived at being able to layer the pieces on the canvas. I began to build them in my mind beforehand and lay down layers that would shape and overlap to an anticipated outcome. This process of symmetry helped create a double image that would become a hill or an inside of a cave or a canyon. Sometimes the paintings were built from the center of the painting and others from the bottom up, scraping off paint and adding another layer if needed. This new access to the painting helped me to really connect with the paint and to see what I needed to see to advance the work.”
