PRESS RELEASE

SPY Projects is pleased to present Finding Her, a show of paintings and drawings by Jaxon Demme. This is the artist’s debut solo exhibition. Finding Her will be on view from July 8th through August 22nd.

In Commedia Dell’arte, a form of Italian Renaissance theatre, masks served a two-fold purpose: They allowed the actor to further explore the character, and the audience to absorb their physical movements without the distraction of facial expressions. In this way masks facilitated the embodiment of archetype while establishing a unique character. As Commedia Dell’arte developed as an artform, the characters came to be referred to as “masks,” whether wearing one or not. The true innovation of the mask was a novel paradox in which abstraction of the subject’s emotive features into a uniform physicality revealed an otherwise hidden depth.

In Finding Her, Demme uses multiple layers of latex and acrylic-based house paint to create a drama in masked tableux. The characters, androgynous but for their uniformly voluminous bobcuts and sleeveless dresses, re-occur and repeat themselves. Some bare their teeth and shriek while their companions brandish their middle fingers. They sit with hands folded in laps, as though struck by a silent, chilling clarity, if not for the peeling away of their skin— the topmost image is often the eighth or ninth painting, mask upon mask, layered atop several underpaintings. Materiality, as much as composition, informs the relationships between figures. They respond to the textural decay of their surroundings by inflicting entropy onto their companions. Demme’s drawings also reflect that volatility inwards and interpose the familiar masks with an obscure, alien drama.

Art often serves as a brief intermission amid the struggle of living. By entering a state of knowing un-belief, the consciousness is given time to integrate new experiences into pre-established archetypes of the self. These are the masks we all wear— a constantly fluctuating cast of anthropomorphized idealisms and trauma. Finding Her is the consequence of an artist experiencing the passage of time while in possession of a beating heart.