Installation view of “Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep” at MOCA Los Angeles
On View features images from notable exhibits
NEW YORK-BASED Jennifer Packer produces lyrical portraits and allegorical paintings, including floral still lifes, funeral bouquets commemorating the loss. In its final days, “Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles features 25 new and recent works. Exploring “intimacy, embodiment and loss”, the paintings and works on paper were made during the intense time of mourning of the pandemic and the lingering vulnerability experienced by people of color as they struggle to be seen and heard and gird against state-sanctioned injustice. “I’m thinking of images that resist, that try to keep their secrets or keep their cool, that put you to work,” the artist said of the featured works. “I hope to create works that suggest how dynamic and complex our lives and relationships are.” The show is Parker’s first exhibition on the West Coast.
“Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep”, on view at MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA from July 1, 2021 through February 1. 21, 2022
LEARN MORE about the exhibition and closing program from February 20, a conversation with artist Kenturah Davis on Jennifer Packer
JENNIFER PACKER, “Idle Hands”, 2021 (oil on canvas, 90 x 84 inches, 228.6 x 213.36 cm). | Purchase with funds provided by the Acquisition and Recovery Committee. Image courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, Corvi-Mora, London
JENNIFER PACKER, “Untitled”, 2020 (charcoal and pastel on colored paper, 9 x 9 3/4 inches / 22.9 x 24.8 cm). | Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, Corvi-Mora, London
Installation view of ‘Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep’, MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA (July 1, 2021-February 21, 2022). | Courtesy of MOCA Los Angeles
JENNIFER PACKER, “Untitled (Revival)”, 2021 (oil on canvas, 40 x 36 inches / 101.6 x 91.4 cm). | Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, Corvi-Mora, London
JENNIFER PACKER, “A Little Life”, 2021 (oil on canvas, 22 1/2 x 18 inches / 57.1 x 45.7 cm). | Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, Corvi-Mora, London
Installation view of ‘Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep’, MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA (July 1, 2021-February 21, 2022). Shown, From left to right, “Laquan (1)”, 2016-2018 (oil on canvas, 60 x 50 inches). Collection of Marilyn and Larry Fields; and “Laquan (2)”, 2017-2018 (oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches). | Collection of Lonti Ebers. | Courtesy of MOCA Los Angeles
WATCH MORE Jennifer Packer shares some of the concepts and meanings behind her work in a video for her recent exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries in London
BOOKSHELF
“Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing” was published to accompany the artist’s 2021 exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, her first exhibition outside the United States. “Jennifer Packer: Tenderheaded”, the first publication to document her paintings, was published in 2018 on the occasion of an exhibition organized by the Renaissance Society in Chicago. Now hard to find, the volume includes a conversation between Packer and Kerry James Marshall.
