Jessie Henson : On the Line

October 24 - December 14, 2024

Overview

Jessie Henson: On the Line
October 24 – December 14, 2024
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 24, 6– 8 pm

Broadway is pleased to announce On the Line, an exhibition of new works by New York artist Jessie Henson, her second solo show with the gallery. Henson will exhibit a number of new works in thread, gold leaf, and paint on paper made over the past year.

Henson’s method of heavy industrial sewing on paper creates hybrid objects with a seductive tactility: part tapestry, part sculpture, part drawing. Her works employ the scale and language of abstract painting, but are created with thousands of individual stitches – each one a line, as the title suggests. These multiple layers of stitches accrete into a velvety brocade, warping and puckering the paper in the process. Polyester and rayon threads of variable hue and sheen coalesce into changeable and dynamic surfaces, making topographies of shimmering color.

In some works, Henson lays down sheets of gleaming gold leaf and acrylic paint on paper, before covering them with layers of golden embroidery that magnify the optic sparkle of the threaded passages. The tension of the stitches rips the paper, and the gold, despite its association with luxury and polish, becomes the site of a rupture. Sharp hits of pure paint emerge like exclamations from behind the sections of abraded metal. These golden sheets neatly encapsulate the contradictions that Henson explores in her work: poignant fragility coupled with sumptuous beauty.

The exhibition’s title allows for a wide range of interpretations: at its most basic level, ‘on the line’ evokes a drawn mark. But the phrase is also used to describe factory workers on a production line, or the sense – perhaps common to all artists – of being held accountable for their own work. Henson embraces these meanings in all their multiplicity.

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Exhibition