Installation image by Dan Watkins
Jen Deluna’s paintings are beautifully rendered bursts of energy that zoom past the eyes in a blur. There’s a feeling of urgency in the way the paintings present themselves as if to alert the viewer of a passing memory. The paintings take their conceptual foundation from classical art motifs and feminine power, doubling the latter with the potential for monstrous confrontation. I was reminded of the scientific theories behind facial recognition. Our memories are more adept at remembering faces as a whole instead of their individual parts. In a close-up, we do not remember people’s faces by their details. Deluna’s zoomed-in view of her subjects assists in giving us an overall view of a face devoid of further details and half submerged in an opaque glaze. Some of the smiles on those faces are as disturbing as the paintings of Yue Minjun. I also recognized a derivation of Marilyn Minter’s glossy portraits, complete with sweat, saliva, or oily patina on flesh. There’s something about a lover’s glance that makes these portraits so slick and glossy, and the effect works. Combined with Deluna’s blurring effect, we get a fleeting glimpse of her subjects, content in their action: smiling, snarling, staring, glancing… Their physical form mimicking flesh while looking like synthetic humanoids made of plastic or wet vinyl. Their details are compelling, but their identities are strange and anonymous.
- Andrew Fish, Boston based artist, writer, curator
March 20, 2025
Related Exhibition
Related artist
1
of 47
