The Service Society | Jessica Helfand

The Service Society New Paintings by Jessica

Helfand

Jim Kempner Fine Art NY

May 16 to June 23, 2024

Untitled #508, 2020. Metal.

6 1/2 x 3 x 1 3/4”.

The Service Society New Paintings by Jessica

Helfand

Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce an online exhibition of new paintings by gallery artist Jessica Helfand. The exhibition is on view through late June, 2024.

Jessica Helfand (b. 1960) is an artist and writer. She grew up in Paris and New York City, and received her BA and MFA from Yale University where she taught for more than two decades. She is the author of numerous books on visual and cultural criticism, and was the first-ever recipient, in 2010, of the Henry Wolf Residency at the American Academy in Rome. A 2018 Director’s Guest at Civitella Ranieri and a 2019 fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, Jessica Helfand was also the 2020 Artist in Residence at Caltech. She lives in New England.

Plastic as Clay

pigment and oil on canvas

The paintings here imagine a diasporic community of Irish women: housekeepers and cooks, chambermaids and scullery maids, gardeners, governesses, and laundresses who were employed—more than a century ago—by a number of wealthy American families up and down the Eastern seabord. Combining research, photography, and the chance operations of artificial intelligence, their portraits reclaim—and reframe—a long-overlooked story of independence, perseverance, and selfhood.

The Habits of Indoor Labor (detail)

Digital pigment and oil on canvas

20 x 16 inches

2023

The Readjustment of Burden

Digital pigment and oil on canvas

8 x 10 inches

2024

opposite

The Human Frame (detail)

Digital pigment and oil on canvas

45 x 30 inches

2024

The False Dream

pigment and oil on canvas

x 16 inches

pigment and oil on canvas

Noblesse Oblige

Untitled #504, 2020. Metal.

7 3/4 x 3 3/4 x 2 1/4”.

this page

TheTrademark of Modern Slavery

Digital pigment and oil on canvas

20 x 16 inches 2022 opposite Chalkline (The Downstairs Girl)

Digital pigment and oil on canvas

20 x 16 inches 2022

Single File

(The Upstairs Girl)

Digital pigment and oil on canvas

20 x 16 inches

The Green Baize Door

Digital pigment and oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Untitled #1966, 2019. Oil on linen. 11 x 8”. this page

An American Wake Digital pigment and oil on canvas

20 x 12 inches 2023 opposite The Merits of Good Intentions Digital pigment and oil on canvas

8 x 10 inches 2024

back cover

Our Shadows Moved on the Wall

Digital pigment and oil on canvas

45 x 30 inches

2023

Located in the heart of Chelsea, the gallery’s three story modernist-inspired structure designed by architects Smith + Thompson offers one of the few outdoor sculpture gardens in New York City, and is included in a number of books about contemporary architecture. Our inventory includes work by artists including Donald Baechler, John Baldessari, Louise Bourgeois, Christo, Chuck Close, Richard Diebenkorn, Jim Dine, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Spencer Finch, Jane Hammond, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Jasper Johns, Deborah Kass, Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, William Kentridge, Jeff Koons, Robert Mangold, Robert Motherwell (Jim Kempner Fine Art represents the Dedalus Foundation, Robert Motherwell’s print archive, in New York), Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Longo,ElizabethPeyton, Robert Rauschenberg, jim kempner fine art

jim kempner fine art specializes in contemporary paintings, sculpture, photography, and works on paper, with a special emphasis on contemporary master prints and outdoor sculpture. Our inventory appeals to the established as well as beginning collector. We work closely with art advisors, designers, corporations and museums to expand and enrich their varied collections.

James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Paula Scher, Sean Scully, Frank Stella, Donald Sultan, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol and many others. Among the contemporary artists whose work we represent are Robert Attanasio, Christopher Beane, Stanley Casselman, Long Bin Chen, Eduardo del Valle and Mirta Gómez, Rinaldo Frattolillo, Gianfranco Gorgoni, John Grande, Jessica Helfand, John Henry, Charlie Hewitt, Jay Kelly, Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, Jerry Mischak, David Mitchell, Craig Norton, Greg Parker, Robert Petersen, Randy Regier, Tom Slaughter, Pal Svensson and Boaz Vaadia. Formerly a private dealer, Jim Kempner opened his gallery, Jim Kempner Fine Art, at its present location in the fall of 1997. Kempner has published prints by Rinaldo Frattolillo, Charlie Hewitt, Robert Indiana, Paula Scher, Bernar Venet, as well as Gianfranco Gorgoni’s photographs of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty

Other publications include Ligorano/Reese’s Line Up portfolio, Untitled 2001 silkscreen, and the DEMOCRACY lightbox, made in collaboration with former gallery director Dru Arstark, under the name Madness of Art Editions. He published his first editioned print— Apocryphal Now—in 2014.