Jennifer Bartlett: Chaos Theory (1971-2013)

Jennifer Bartlett: Chaos Theory (1971-2013), 2013
Text by Ann Landi
104 pages, Softcover with dust jacket
Published by Locks Art Publications
ISBN: 978-1-879173-83-5 $55.00

Chaos Theory (1971-2013), is a publication centered on Jennifer Bartlett's career-long fascination with systems, color, and shape. The fully-illustrated catalog accompanies an exhibition at Locks Gallery and further documents additional representative examples of Bartlett's abstract work, with an essay by Ann Landi. When applied to color, Bartlett's self-imposed guidelines produce dizzying arrays, as hues are methodically mixed, layered, and dotted side-by-side in endless permutations. While her approach verges on the Conceptual, the works themselves are vibrant celebrations of line and tint. Critic Calvin Tomkins stated that, "What she was doing sounded like Conceptual Art: she was using mathematical systems to determine the placement of her dots. But the results-all those bright, astringently colored dots bouncing around and forming into clusters on the grid-never looked Conceptual." This publication is the first to comprehensively trace this thread in Bartlett's practice, reproducing her newest paintings on canvas, the Blob paintings, and gathering works from three pivotal series in her career: early plate pieces from the 1970s, shaped canvases from the early 2000s, and plate pieces relating to the 2008-2010 room-size installation Recitative.