Ends of the Earth

Slag Contemporary is pleased to present ENDS OF THE EARTH, which exhibits the most recent works by New York-based artist Joy Garnett. Garnett’s paintings dwell on scenes that cannot be observed with the naked eye: overlooked edges of unknown landscapes in moments that resemble twilight, the interval between night and day that is paradoxically both and neither. Her source material, found images drawn from surveillance footage and night vision photographs, reveals our contemporary condition of watching and being watched. Her painted landscapes invite a contemplative gaze as they conjure an atmosphere of a world half-asleep but waking and on the cusp of something new.

In ENDS OF THE EARTH the artist takes the techno-media landscape as source material and a point of departure. Garnett’s use of found footage results in the exploration of sublime yet apocalyptic landscapes that address and problematize contemporary media, politics and culture. Deborah Frizzell elaborates on Garnett’s work: “Painting rapidly in a single sitting, Garnett disrupts the ‘disinterestedness’ and flatness of her source imagery by infiltrating the usual media-inflected filters. Her source material is superseded and pierced by tactility, improvisation, and the body’s kinesthetic awareness”. Furthermore, the strong brushstrokes, the use of light and vibrant pigments reinforce this kinesthetic awareness and the importance of a craft that relies on the body’s limits, in the midst of our technologically based era.

Joy Garnett studied painting at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and received her MFA from The City College of New York. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums at home and abroad that include the Milwaukee Art Museum, MoMA-PS1, Whitney Museum of American Art, Boston University Art Gallery, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the Museum of Contemporary Craft Portland, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and Witte Zaal in Ghent, Belgium. Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, Altria and The West Collection, Oaks, PA. She has received grants from Anonymous Was a Woman and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and commissions from The Wellcome Trust and The Chipstone Foundation. Garnett lives in Brooklyn and works in Queens, New York.