Jennifer Bartlett: WATER

This extraordinary ensemble of paintings and objects, which Jennifer Bartlett has brought together under the title “Water,” is her most recent body of work. Certain images in the paintings, like bridges or houses, are transposed into sculpture -- brightly painted toy-like objects made to be placed about the floor. In dramatic and pragmatic ways, Bartlett probes the watery realm of her painted images to extract something more concrete, solid, and clear. But the objects remain elusive, cast as miniatures and representations - afloat in their own precarious space.

Jennifer Bartlett has always been fascinated by water as a metaphor for the mysterious phenomena of space, vision and memory -- the floating world of human perception. Her palette, whether pastel or vivid, is of crystalline clarity, and her fragmented shapes and multi-colored lines and grids draw us into shimmering and enigmatic depths.

Jennifer Bartlett studied at Mills College and at Yale School of Art and Architecture, and now lives in New York. She has exhibited widely since 1963 and has several major monographs published on her work, including essays by Calvin Tomkins, Roberta Smith and Arthur Danto.

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Jennifer Bartlett: WATER