Jennifer Yorke: Gallery Talk

Thursday, October 2: Boliou Gallery, 4 p.m. [Sponsored by the Department of Art & Art History]

"'Seven Strained Smiles' and 'Bridesmaid': Recent work by Jennifer Yorke" is on exhibition in Boliou Gallery until October 18.

"In my work I examine the tension between public space and private identity. Through manipulations of familiar images, I suggest that our public and private selves are not easily reconciled.

I exploit the conventions of portrait photography in Bridesmaids, a group of large scale two-color screen prints. Only the most basic elements of such portraits remain: the clenched teeth of a photographic smile, the identical artificial pearls of middle-class weddings, and lines denoting the vertical and horizontal axes of the face. Despite the poverty of these images, the rigid conventions of portrait photography make them recognizable. Seven Strained Smiles is an examination of the aggressive, alienating element of self-presentation. These small images of the nose and mouth area of yearbook portraits float on large sheets of paper. The grimacing, unrecognizable sitters are isolated from each other by this expansive boarder, which amplifies their own efforts at self-presentation. The viewer must remain at a distance in order to see all seven images at once; the small images, however, are impossible to read from this distance. As a result, the isolation of the images from each other is extended to the viewer."

Jennifer Yorke is a Chicago print and book artist who exhibits regionally and nationally, with work in the collections of the Auckland Museum of Art (New Zealand), the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney Australia), and the Huntsville Museum of Art, among others. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Carleton College. Jennifer lives with her husband and dog Fabio in Chicago.