JAMIE CHAN
LETTUCE MAKES YOU TIRED
09.30.22 - 11.30.22
Dunes is pleased to announce Lettuce Makes You Tired, a solo show by Jamie Chan, a Chinese American artist based in Brooklyn, NY. This exhibition weaves together two lives of the artist: that of full time office employee, and that of the full time artist. More often than not the day jobs, which keep one's practice alive are shrouded from the viewer, a holdover perpetuating the myth of artistic practice. In Chan’s case, the openness of this balance informs the work.
“With little time to paint, I had to become more practical in how paint was applied and decisions were made, breaking down steps and layers in advance and knowing what was achievable in a 2 hour window. Most of the 2 hours would be spent looking, then I would strategize a few marks in order to spiritually move on with my life. I would wake up and brush my teeth near the painting before work. Later, digesting my dinner and listening to music, I would look and paint. Naturally, this shift of day to night energy would become fused into the paintings, making them into accumulations of small transitions and about this version of time”
With paintings and drawings dating from 2018-2022, this exhibition deals with subjects that are intensely personal, but also widely relatable to anyone familiar with the trappings of aspirational lifestyle advertising; Fitness, Tech, Cars… "Getting Ahead". These themes often dovetail with nods to classical figuration and process in painting.
The paintings Body Scan (2021), Offering (2022), and Death of the Small Self (2020) depict figures in athletic movement, referencing zoom circuit training within the artist’s circle of friends. We also see references to ads for home gym tech products. Conjuring the need for regular exercise and physical health, the works question the assumed possibility of contentment and peace in a time of constant optimization and lifestyle marketing. The works also take up the mediated space of technology as both a regular disruptor, and mediator of one’s relationships to self and others.
Almost all of the works include a figure. It could be an anonymous model or a close friend, but in either case these figures and their rendering take up the physical and psychological space of effort. Chan draws comparison between the effort in the figures’ postures and other physical aspects of painting and representation, employing sketching, porous washes of color, layering over mistakes and over time. She emphasizes through process the need for experimentation, improvisation, and feeling out one’s capacities.
This will also be the release of Jamie Chan's t-shirt edition, I feel weird (edition of 50) with Dunes, now available for pre-order on the site. Shirts are sourced from Everybody.world, 100% recycled cotton, and made in US