Post-War & Contemporary Art

Provenance:

Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York

Lot Note:

Jamie Nares has developed a painting practice that transforms the canvas into a stage for physical performance. Born in London and based in New York, Nares creates large-scale gestural paintings, as seen in Western (2001), that meld the boundaries between painting, performance, and time-based media.

At the heart of her practice is an emphasis on the physicality and the very act of painting itself. Employing long-handled brushes and squeegees–in this instance, long yellow gestural strokes in Western–the artist creates sweeping, fluid strokes across expansive canvases that necessitate movement by the viewer across the entire surface. In fact, these are not just large paintings: they are records of choreographed movements, capturing physical energy and the specific duration of each gesture. The resulting works feature bold, continuous marks that seem to freeze motion in time, transforming the static medium of painting into something that conveys the pulse of movement.

Nares' approach to materials reinforces this focus on process and physicality. Working primarily with oil paint, she uses both traditional brushes and unconventional tools, underscoring the tactile relationship between body, tool, and surface. Moreover, the scale of the works—Western spans just over 12 feet—demands that painting becomes a full-body activity, turning each canvas into essentially an arena for performance.

Indeed, this intersection of painting and performance connects to broader themes in Nares' work: expressly the exploration of both time and movement. Known also for the mesmerizing slow-motion film Street (produced in 2011) Nares considers the ways in which temporal experience can be captured, transformed and conveyed across myriad media. The paintings also function as temporal records, preserving specific moments and movements while inviting viewers to imagine the dynamic process of their creation

More broadly, Nares' work offers a fresh take on the legacy of Abstract Expressionism and technique of Action Painting, updating gestural abstraction for the twenty-first century. By explicitly connecting painting to both performance and documentation, Nares demonstrates how traditional media can engage with contemporary concerns about process, time, the body, as well as viewer engagement.