Jenny Kemp
Cory Emma Siegler
seamlessness
May 25–July 7, 2024
Artist discussion
Saturday, June 29, 12 PM
Turley is pleased to bring together artists Jenny Kemp and Cory Emma Siegler for their joint exhibition seamlessness. While Kemp’s body of work brings the outside in, Siegler recontextualizes the domestic. Each excels with their use of organic line and form to create their colorful works.
Watch the Artist Discussion for seamlessness, with guest moderator Will Hutnick
Artist discussion with Jenny Kemp, Cory Emma Siegler, and Will Hutnick at Turley Gallery on June 29, 2024. Video by Zach Durocher.
Press for seamlessness
Jenny Kemp, Trappings, 2024, acrylic on linen mounted to board, 18 x 14 inches
Jenny Kemp
I make paintings that explore a language built on a symbiosis between line and color. Linear formations grow laterally across the surface with fluid and kinetic energy inspired by biological movement and set in motion through subtle and vibratory hue shifts. Navigating a tension between hard edge and free-form sensibilities that parallel perceptions of time and growth, elements come together as constructions that tease figuration and evoke a suspension between motion and stillness, continuum and boundary.
Jenny Kemp, Unknot, 2024, acrylic on linen mounted to board, 32 x 25 inches
Jenny Kemp received her BS in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MFA in Painting from the University at Albany. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, most recently in solo exhibitions in Shenzhen, China, at KennaXu Gallery (in collaboration with Chambers Fine Art), Gold/Montclair in Montclair, NJ, as well as a two-person exhibition at Transmitter in New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include shows at JDJ, McKenzie Fine Art, 5-50 Gallery, and Kenise Barnes Gallery. Featured publications include 100 Painters of Tomorrow, published by Thames and Hudson, New American Paintings, The Huffington Post, Seattle’s City Arts, and Chronogram. She is a 2015 NYFA Fellowship recipient in painting.
Cory Emma Siegler, MWMWM, 2023, repurposed scraps, clothing and other fabrics, cotton batting, and cotton thread, 47 x 47 inches
Cory Emma Siegler
Operating between the worlds of art, design, and craft, my practice explores the tactility, functionality, and inherent potential of textiles. With a reverence for technical skill and the physicality of handiwork, I create patchwork-pieced quilted objects out of old fabrics, clothing, and linens. Used in domestic spaces—on a bed or tabletop, or wrapped around a body—these items served a purpose both quotidian and intimate. In a continued act of intimacy, I extend the life of this material by breaking it down into color, shape and texture, then reconfiguring it back together piece by piece.
I use the grid as an underlying structure to create new visual and physical patterns and connections. Fusing together principles of geometric abstraction, ornamentation, and traditions of quiltmaking, hard-edged compositions are softened by the drape of the cloth and imbued with a material history and memory. Pattern and form are unified to create harmonious constructions that have the familiarity of a quilt, while also existing as something transformed, playing upon conventional modes of perception and expectation.
Cory Emma Siegler, (((O)))(((O))), 2022, repurposed scraps, clothing and other fabrics, cotton batting, and cotton thread, 62.75 x 51.25 inches
Cory Emma Siegler is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY, who makes textile works, drawings, and artists’ books. Cory earned a BFA in Printmaking from Pratt Institute in 2008. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY), MONO Practice Gallery (Baltimore, MD), 80WSE at NYU Gallery (New York, NY), Bard Graduate Center Gallery (New York, NY), and Printed Matter, Inc. (New York, NY). She has been an exhibitor at the NY Art Book Fair (MoMA PS1, Queens, NY), the Odds and Ends Art Book Fair (Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, CT), and the Brooklyn Art Book Fair (Brooklyn, NY) and her artists’ books are held in the permanent collections of the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art Library, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Library, among others. She has been an artist in residence at the Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), the Textile Arts Center (Brooklyn, NY) and Eileen Fisher Making Space (Brooklyn, NY).
Installation photography by Spencer House Studio