Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Restless Animal Kingdom, artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins’ third solo exhibition with the gallery. Hutchins’ practice embraces an expansive array of materials and approaches, from wall-mounted assemblages to fused glass works to ceramics installed atop couches, recliners, and chairs. Inspired by found objects and images from her personal life, Hutchins allows her materials— and the ways they connect to her hands and body—to drive the form and experience of her work. For her upcoming exhibition, the Portland, Oregon-based artist will present a selection of new, large-scale ceramics, including several sculptures that can be worn—bringing the presence of the body even more directly into view in her creative output. The exhibition will be open from February 25 - April 18, 2020 at the gallery’s 507 W. 24th Street location.

On March 5, in conjunction with Armory Art Week, Marianne Boesky Gallery will host a special reception featuring a performance developed by Hutchins in collaboration with dancers from the Trisha Brown Dance Company and the Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers in New York. Throughout the evening, performers outfitted in Hutchins’ wearable ceramics and clothing screen-printed by the artist will move through the gallery, performing a range of improvised motions and serving food and beverages from the vessels. By activating her ceramics through dance as well as through functional use, Hutchins extends her ongoing exploration of the relationship between fine art and the objects of our everyday lives.

Hutchins embraces an intuitive approach, allowing her works to form and reveal themselves in process of making. This is often supported by unexpected material juxtapositions and discoveries in her home and studio, creating an inherent sense of intimacy within her installations. Her most recognizable sculptures are furniture pieces transformed to cradle hand-molded ceramics. Often well-worn, the dents, juts, scratches, and loose threads of the furniture evoke a human presence, with the ceramic serving as a surrogate for the body itself. With her more recent ceramics, produced over the last year, Hutchins amplifies the importance of the body to her practice by making these sculptures wearable. In this way, the ceramic is no longer a stand-in for the body but is rather in a dynamic relationship with it.

The upcoming exhibition will include both new wearable and purely sculptural ceramics, highlighting the trajectory between these works. In instances, the vessels will be presented atop of furniture flipped upside-down, which serve as both a critique of the history of the pedestal and as a potential resting place for the dancers during the performance. In addition to the show at Marianne Boesky Gallery, Hutchins will be included in the inaugural exhibition of the new University Art Musuem at New Mexico State University, which opens on February 28, 2020 and will also be accompanied by a performance inspired by her wearable ceramics. Hutchins has additionally been nominated and selected to participate in the 2020 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, which will open on March 4th. 

Jessica Jackson Hutchins (b. 1971 in Chicago) produces sculptural installations, assemblages, paintings, and large-scale ceramics that often transform everyday household objects. She has recently had solo exhibitions at Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH (2016); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2014); the Hepworth Wakefield Museum (2013); the Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, MI (2013); and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MA (2011). Significant group exhibitions include Makeshift at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, where Hutchins first premiered her performance work; the 55th Venice Biennale, The Encyclopedic Palace (2013); and The Whitney Biennial (2010). Her work has been incorporated into public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Margulies Collection, Miami; and the Portland Art Museum, Portland. Hutchins holds a BA in Art History from Oberlin College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.