Esprit: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Matthew Kirk, Memory Jugs, Philadelphia Wireman March 18–April 16, 2016

esprit: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Matthew Kirk, Memory Jugs, Philadelphia Wireman
March 18–April 16, 2016

Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce esprit, a group exhibition featuring Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Matthew Kirk, Memory Jugsby anonymous makers and the Philadelphia Wireman that will be on view March 18 through April 16, 2016. The works in esprit evoke a quality of being that is powerful and charged, but enigmatic. Common objects, marks and materials are transformed from their everyday realities into that which is more essential or spiritual, projecting emotion, belief or longing.

On view will be sculptural works by Jessica Jackson Hutchins, whose engagement with materials and forms is tactile and intimate. Hutchins memorializes, through touch and accretion, the memory or aura of relationships, time and language. Using an array of everyday objects such as worn shirts, discarded furniture, yesterday’s newspaper, the works are accumulations of daily life and mundane rituals transformed by the artist into reverential objects that are as idiosyncratic as they are familiar.

Hutchins’ work will be presented alongside a group of wire and found material assemblages by the Philadelphia Wireman. Wireman’s bundles consist of different gauges of wire wrapped around everyday objects and materials including food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, batteries, pens, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools and jewelry. Their maker, who remains unidentified, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through his selection and transformation of ordinary materials. The pieces are often compared to African power objects and other ritualized, vernacular traditions, but resonate with historical and contemporary collage and assemblage practices.

In Matthew Kirk's paintings, a pictorial and schematic space is created through a frenetic layering of abstract marks, along with nearly recognizable shapes and objects. His is a personal lexicon that references information, movement and architecture, as well as colors, patterns and shapes sourced from rugs, pottery and masks of his Navajo heritage.

Also included in esprit is a small group of mosaic collaged vessels often called Memory Jugs. Symbolic objects or possessions such as keys, shells, timepieces and jewelry are adhered to the surface of bottles or jugs using putty or cement. The jugs on view, circa late 19th to early 20th Century, are perhaps a continuation of a tradition that originated in Africa around burial traditions.