About
Colors charge us externally and internally. I translate these colors into works every day. On an intuitive level, I am guided by the colors in nature.
—Jennifer Guidi
Light and color pervade every aspect of Jennifer Guidi’s work. The Los Angeles artist’s radiant, mandala-like paintings are marked by tonal and chromatic shifts that operate in concert with richly textured surfaces. The effect echoes natural phenomena and undergirds a powerful archetypal symbolism. Guidi mixes sand into her paints—she uses both oils and acrylics—to produce immersive abstract compositions that borrow from the pared-down structures of Minimalism while evoking ancient theories of energy and perception.
Born in Redondo Beach, California, Guidi received a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. On moving to Los Angeles, she was immediately struck by the city’s distinctive hazy light and blocky 1950s architecture. Basing her early paintings on her own photographs of local domestic interiors, she became increasingly interested in the colors and textures of her subjects’ walls. Following a 2012 visit to Morocco, she began to pursue a more abstract approach, drawing inspiration from the heavy stitching and irregular undersides of the country’s handmade rugs. She made her first abstract “dot paintings” that year, applying small dabs of white paint to black grounds.
Guidi began incorporating sand into her panels in 2013, using sticks found on the beach in Hawaii as simple mark-making tools. She then developed a system of underpainting in which she first applies a thick layer of sand to the surface of the canvas; while this is still wet, she makes marks with a dowel in controlled and repetitive movements, often adding sand and paint along the edges of the divots. The result of this intensely physical process is a hypnotic swirl of saturated color that is at once contemporary and timeless, prompting consideration of the diversity of cultural and corporeal meanings that have been assigned to shape and pattern.
Photo: Brica Wilcox
#JenniferGuidi
Website
Jennifer Guidi: Mountain Range
In this video, produced by Château La Coste, Jennifer Guidi discusses her latest solo exhibition, Mountain Range, conceived in response to the architecture of Château La Coste’s Richard Rogers Gallery and the surrounding landscape of Provence in the South of France. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with Gagosien, is now on view through September 3, 2023.
Jennifer Guidi: Mountain Range
Invited to exhibit at Château La Coste in Provence, Jennifer Guidi created a new body of work that engaged with the cantilevered architecture of the gallery building, designed by Richard Rogers, and with the artistic heritage of the region. Amie Corry reports on the evolution of the exhibition and on its place within Guidi’s larger practice.
Shortlist
Twelve Tracks: Jennifer Guidi
Jennifer Guidi shares a selection of the music she listens to in the studio and speaks about its connection to her meditative painting process.
Jennifer Guidi
The artist speaks with Laura Fried about her most recent paintings, the symbol of the serpent, and her evolving relationship to color.
Now available
Gagosien Quarterly Spring 2020
The Spring 2020 issue of Gagosien Quarterly is now available, featuring Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #412 (2003) on its cover.
(RED) Auction 2018
Theaster Gates and Sir David Adjaye join Bono to spearhead (RED)’s third auction of contemporary art and design, raising funds for the global fight against AIDS. As Gagosien prepares the preview exhibition, Gillian Pistell looks at the urgency of this vital cause.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
Frieze Seoul 2023
September 7–9, 2023, booth C14
COEX, Seoul
www.frieze.com
Gagosien is pleased to participate in Frieze Seoul 2023 with a presentation of contemporary works by gallery artists, including Derrick Adams, Georg Baselitz, Dan Colen, Edmund de Waal, Jadé Fadojutimi, Urs Fischer, Cy Gavin, Mehdi Ghadyanloo, Nan Goldin, Katharina Grosse, Jennifer Guidi, Thomas Houseago, Alex Israel, Rick Lowe, Takashi Murakami, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Penone, Ed Ruscha, Alexandria Smith, Anna Weyant, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood, and Richard Wright, among others.
Coinciding with the fair is the arrival of Jiyoung Lee, who was recently appointed to lead the gallery’s operations in Korea. Lee joins Gagosien following nearly fifteen years based in Seoul working on behalf of both Korean and Western galleries. Her appointment builds on the gallery’s establishment of a business entity in Korea last year, and provides for expanded activities in the region.
Gagosien’s booth at Frieze Seoul 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Jadé Fadojutimi, © Jen Guidi, © Alexandria Smith, © Mehdi Ghadyanloo, © Rick Lowe Studio, © Jonas Wood, Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Book Fair
Acid-Free Los Angeles Art Book Market 2023
June 16–18, 2023, table A05
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
acid-free.info
Gagosien is participating in the Acid-Free Los Angeles Art Book Market, which is organized by a collective of Los Angeles–based independent publishers. Now in its third year, the three-day fair brings together over ninety exhibitors to present new books and projects and foster meaningful conversations around art publishing. To celebrate the recent release of its six hundredth title, the gallery will offer six hundred Gagosien publications for $10 each, including books on West Coast artists Jennifer Guidi, Ed Ruscha, and Jonas Wood, among others. The fair is free to attend.
A selection of recent Gagosien publications
In Conversation
Great (Women) Painters
Jennifer Guidi, Tschabalala Self, Genesis Tramaine, Lisa Yuskavage
Wednesday, April 19, 2023, 6:30pm
Dallas Museum of Art
dma.org
Join Phaidon and the Dallas Museum of Art to celebrate the publication of Great Women Painters. This survey, which explores the work of over three hundred women painters spanning five centuries, champions a more diverse history of art, showcasing both well-known historical figures and contemporary emerging artists. Jennifer Guidi and fellow artists Tschabalala Self, Genesis Tramaine, and Lisa Yuskavage will discuss their practices and reflect on artists and mentors—past, present, and future—in a conversation moderated by Anna Katherine Brodbeck, senior curator of contemporary art at the Dallas Museum of Art.
Great Women Painters (London: Phaidon, 2022)
Museum Exhibitions
Just Opened
Jennifer Guidi
And so it is.
Through January 6, 2024
Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California
ocma.art
And so it is.—Jennifer Guidi’s first solo institutional exhibition in the United States—surveys the artist’s work over the last ten years and features a number of new paintings. Using a methodical system in which sand is applied directly to the surface of the canvas while wet, Guidi creates a ritualistic, repetitive choreography—one entirely her own. Focusing on the importance of place, especially evident within Guidi’s embrace of the colors of California—the fleeting pink and red of its sunrises and sunsets, the hazy light of Los Angeles—the show reveals an intricate body of work that operates as its own energy source.
Jennifer Guidi, Breathe In Strength and Life (Black Sand with Colored Sand, Black, Multicolor, Hot Pink Ground), 2023 © Jennifer Guidi
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Jennifer Guidi
Mountain Range
June 20–September 3, 2023
Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France
chateau-la-coste.com
Jennifer Guidi has conceived a unique installation of her work in response to the architecture of Château La Coste’s Richard Rogers Gallery and the context of the Provence region in the South of France. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with Gagosien, features two large paintings, hanging back-to-back and suspended in midair, which bisect the gallery and playfully interrupt the expected vista of the Luberon mountain range with Guidi’s imagined landscapes. On the walls, smaller mountainscapes, acting almost as windows, lead visitors through the space and provide unique vignettes rich in color, form, and texture.
To learn more watch Guidi speak about the project in a video produced by Château La Coste for Gagosien Quarterly.
Installation view, Jennifer Guidi: Mountain Range, Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France, June 20–September 3, 2023. Artwork © Jennifer Guidi. Photo: Frédéric Desimoni
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Jennifer Guidi
Full Moon
July 1–October 16, 2022
Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai
www.thelongmuseum.org
Full Moon—Jennifer Guidi’s first solo institutional exhibition in China—surveys the artist’s work to date and features a number of new paintings. The exhibition’s title emphasizes the cosmological and mystical roots of Guidi’s practice. Her abstract compositions refer to the natural world literally and visually as she mixes sand with paint to depict arresting natural and metaphysical phenomena.
Installation view, Jennifer Guidi: Full Moon, Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai, July 1–August 21, 2022. Artwork © Jennifer Guidi
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Artists Inspired by Music
Interscope Reimagined
January 30–February 13, 2022
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
www.lacma.org
To mark the thirtieth anniversary of Interscope Records, the company invited artists to select albums and songs from Interscope’s groundbreaking catalogue and fostered exchanges between artists and musicians to generate resonant pairings. The exhibition, which includes more than fifty works, brings an intergenerational group of visual artists into dialogue with iconic musicians from the last three decades, providing a fresh perspective on influential music for the present moment. Work by John Currin, Jennifer Guidi, Damien Hirst, Titus Kaphar, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, and Anna Weyant is included.
Jennifer Guidi, Seeking Hearts (Black MT, Pink Sand, Pink CS, Pink Ground), 2021 © Jennifer Guidi. Photo: Brica Wilcox