From Above: Cities, Centers, and Systems

JULIE JANKOWSKI

FROM ABOVE: CITIES, CENTERS, AND SYSTEMS Rosenberg Gallery

Terminal X-ess, 2014 oil on canvas 24” x 24”

In the exhibition From Above: Cities, Centers, and Systems, artist Julie Jankowski explores the world from vast distances. Threaded with environmental queries, sociopolitical quandaries, and collective trauma as a conceptual basis for her projects, Jankowski references satellite images and analytical data maps to explore the dynamics of cause and effect among the engineered and natural worlds. The selected works are representative of Jankowski’s process over a span of seven years and include works in paint, drawing, and digital media.

post New Orleans, 2014 wax pencil on synthetic paper 20” x 26”

“Awesome and rapidly developing technologies continue to shape our experiences and our expectations of what is possible—in particular, they have an impact on our experience of time and place. They can manipulate our reactions to public events. What we know of a place, or an event via media, influences us emotionally and feeds our desire to be involved and to feel collectively. This body of work addresses a contemporary experience of connection, location, and the systems that define these within a technology-driven culture,” she said.

Jankowski’s ideation is triggered by public events experienced through media feeds received on a smart phone: a system failure, a natural disaster, a public threat—events that are large in scale and scope, that take over public consciousness through long-term media attention.

Inversion, New Orleans, 2014 oil on panel 14” x 14”

New Orleans, Houston, and Washington, DC, are the primary cities denoted in the exhibition. The stadium, as a particular locus, represents a center of public importance. One example of a public event giving rise to many of these pieces is Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Through it, New Orleans and Houston became fused forever by the events surrounding rescue and survival attempts of the citizens of New Orleans. The stadiums belonging to these two cities suddenly became shelters for masses of people escaping the hurricane’s aftermath.

Numerous drawings included in the exhibition form a visual journal of Jankowski’s thought process as they move between literal representations, abstractions, and totally invented map-like marks. All point to an analogy for networks and connections.

Palimpsest, Houston, 2014 oil on panel 12” x 12”

Consistent elements of this work are two-dimensional collections of interconnected lines, shapes, and rhythms, creating a degree of order within the chaos of all that is there. The underlying grid structure is often the most apparent form, juxtaposed with important natural structures, such as rivers and lakes. She often carves out vast areas of empty spaces that encroach upon or interrupt the ground plane, creating another kind of space where there once was structure or matter.

Jankowski’s use of materials combines additive and subtractive processes. Paint is applied to a surface, sometimes in layers, systematically wiped out in areas of lines and shapes, or scratched and drawn as the paint layers dry. The physical effects of these actions become a metaphor for human impact on the earth’s surface or, in turn, for the natural environment impacting the human-made.

The stresses and conflicts between the natural and the manmade can be seen engaging in a continuous process of overwriting the data.

double-down, 2014 digital image 22” x 28”

JULIE JANKOWSKI FROM ABOVE: CITIES, CENTERS, AND SYSTEMS

NOVEMBER 10, 2014 – JANUARY 4, 2015 (Goucher is closed November 25-30) ARTIST’S RECEPTION // THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 6-9 P.M.

Rosenberg Gallery DIRECTIONS

GALLERY HOURS

Baltimore Beltway, I-695, to exit 27A. Make first left onto campus.

9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Monday – Friday 410.337.6477

The Rosenberg Gallery program is funded with the assistance of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts and Sciences.

The exhibit is free and open to the public.

www.goucher.edu/rosenberg COVER IMAGE: plane ride, 2014, digital image, 22” x 28”

15130-3236 11/14