Locks Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of plate paintings from a formative period of Jennifer Bartlett’s career. Dating from 1969-1977, the paintings all adhere to a 1-foot square, gridded plate format, yet Bartlett’s experimentational approach is reflected by their varying sequencing and number of plates. A new, comprehensive catalogue of the artist’s 1970s plate painting and studies, including works in museum collections, accompanies the exhibit. These serial works, each with imagery derived from individual dots on steel plates, develop a rich progression that conjures up the essence of Kandinsky’s influential 1926 essay entitled Point and Line to Plane, Kandinsky’s essay maps out a philosophical blueprint for Bartlett in the 1970s. Bartlett’s evolving subject and sequencing culminated in Rhapsody, a 987-plate painting and seminal work created in 1975- 1976.
Jennifer Losch Bartlett (b. Long Beach, CA, 1941) received her B.A. from Mills College, CA, and her B.F.A. (1964) and M.F.A. (1965) from Yale University, CT. Her works are in the collections of Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Brooklyn Museum,NY; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Denver Art Museum,CO; de Young Museum, CA; Fogg Art Museum, MA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, MO; North Carolina Museum of Art,NC; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts,PA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Princeton Art Museum, NJ; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, VA; Walker Art Center, MN; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and The Tate Gallery, London, England, among others. Her work was the focus of an exhibition and monograph Epic Systems: Three Monumental Paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2015. Her recent retrospective History of the Universe, curated by Klaus Ottman traveled to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA and Parrish Art Museum, NY, with an accompanying catalog. Other solo exhibitions have taken place at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Tate Gallery, London, England; Baltimore Art Museum, MD; and The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.
