Jane Hammond

Search Light

Galerie Lelong

New York, 528 West 26th Street

Jane Hammond, returning to Galerie Lelong, New York following her 2011 exhibition, introduces three new bodies of work, including 3-D drawings, paintings, and black and white photographs. In Dazzle Paintings series, photographs chronicling the mundane goes through a process that involves painting the image onto mica sheet infused with metal leaf alongside reflective materials like copper, silver or gold underneath. The peculiar familiarity of the subjects evokes nostalgia and sympathy, while Hammond’s intricate and laborious method transforms the figures into emblems of daily life and collective memory.

Jane Hammond, Paddler, 2016 Acrylic paint on mica over Plexiglass with silver, gold, copper and palladium leaf © Jane Hammond, Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.

The New York-based artist, whose 2005 Fallen sculpture for which she inscribed the name of each American soldier killed Iraq War on a leaf remains among the most impactful works of art on war and humanity, introduces 3-D silver leaf drawings in her current exhibition. Using internet search tools to source imagery, the artist therefore relies on chance, spontaneity, and variety to eventually conduct a complex structure holding various materials including Japanese silver leaf, rag paper, and acrylic paint. Reminiscent of a map or family album, the sculpture has sensory feature that can be activated with each viewer passing by. 

Search Light will run through April 22, 2017.