Installation view of “Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep” at MOCA Los Angeles
On View presents images from noteworthy exhibitions
NEW YORK-BASED Jennifer Packer makes lyrical portraits and allegorical tableaux, including floral still lifes, funerary bouquets commemorating loss. In its final days, “Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles presents 25 new and recent works. Exploring “intimacy, embodiment, and loss,” the paintings and works on paper were made during the intense period of grief from the pandemic and the enduring vulnerability experienced by people of color as they struggle to be seen and heard and gird against state-sanctioned injustice. “I think about images that resist, that attempt to retain their secrets or maintain their composure, that put you to work,” the artist said about the works on view. “I hope to make works that suggest how dynamic and complex our lives and relationships really are.” The show is Parker’s first West Coast exhibition.
“Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep,” on view at MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif., from July 1, 2021-Feb. 20, 2022
FIND MORE about the exhibition and Feb. 20 closing program, a conversation with artist Kenturah Davis on Jennifer Packer
JENNIFER PACKER, “Idle Hands,” 2021 (oil on canvas, 90 x 84 inches, 228.6 x 213.36 cm). | Purchase with funds provided by the Acquisition and Collection Committee. Image courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, Corvi-Mora, London
JENNIFER PACKER, “Untitled,” 2020 (charcoal and pastel on colored paper, 9 x 9 3/4 inches / 22.9 x 24.8 cm). | Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, Corvi-Mora, London
Installation view of “Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep,” MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. (July 1, 2021-Feb. 21, 2022). | Courtesy MOCA Los Angeles
JENNIFER PACKER, “Untitled (Revival),” 2021 (oil on canvas, 40 x 36 inches / 101.6 x 91.4 cm). | Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, Corvi-Mora, London
JENNIFER PACKER, “A Little Life,” 2021 (oil on canvas, 22 1/2 x 18 inches / 57.1 x 45.7 cm). | Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, Corvi-Mora, London
Installation view of “Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep,” MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, Calif. (July 1, 2021-Feb. 21, 2022). Shown, From left, “Laquan (1),” 2016-2018 (oil on canvas, 60 x 50 inches). Collection of Marilyn and Larry Fields; and “Laquan (2),” 2017-2018 (oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches). | Collection of Lonti Ebers. | Courtesy MOCA Los Angeles
WATCH MORE Jennifer Packer shares some of the concepts and meanings behind her work in a video for her recent exhibition at Serpentine Galleries in London
BOOKSHELF
“Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing” was published to accompany the artist’s 2021 exhibition at Serpentine Gallery’s, her first show outside the United States. “Jennifer Packer: Tenderheaded,” the first publication to document her paintings, was published in 2018 on the occasion of an exhibition organized by the Renaissance Society in Chicago. Now hard to find, the volume includes a conversation between Packer and Kerry James Marshall.
