The subtle buildup of unique color, sharp and soft shapes, and haunting textures in “Untitled” lure viewers in feet first, with and without socks. It is the mapping of presence, of being unable to be still in a world that historically wishes someone looking like him would. There are traces of an outlined hand hovering above what Packer has fully fleshed out. The most intriguing elements to behold are the implied movements of the figure’s elongated hands and bulbous feet. The color palette is minimal- reddish brown tones, moderate whites, pieces of powder blue, the brilliant yellow pants breaking up the monotony. A serene Black man, lying his head against an ambiguously depicted dog, prominent dark eye casually staring back, full mouth ready to smile.

In the first room of thirteen paintings, the large, majestic “Idle Hands” lords over the rest.

It allows the viewer to become wholly suspended in these saturated atmospheres, to find themselves immersed in not just the subjects, but these surprisingly bold colors only an artist passionate about the act of painting could make. These poignant works exploring human facets of memories are spaced light years apart and for good reason. In Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep, Jennifer Packer’s tenderly portrayed figures and impressionistic flowers fill the varied sized canvases and flow in deep, provocative harmony along the white walls of the MOCA Contemporary Gallery in Los Angeles, California. The work of representing black subjects in a media landscape saturated with images of black victims of state-sponsored violence is indeed risky.“Interior,” oil on canvas, 2021, Courtesy of Sikkema-Jenkins & Co., New York and Corvi-Mora, London. In characterizing her process of working from live models as a matter of “anticipating danger at every turn,” Packer alluded to the challenge she accepts with every painting.

Rasping accents of scraped black pigment and sickly, viscous blue jostle with anemic pink blossoms, while tracks of solvent-thinned pigment run down the surface.ĭuring her talk, Packer showed slides picturing black victims of state violence-Bland, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald. Packer’s tribute to a woman she never knew eschews figuration in favor of a furious arrangement of green tentacles that burst from the composition’s center. Bland’s family resisted public visualizations of their private grief, refusing all media requests for photographs of the funeral. The social media campaign from which Packer derived her title demanded public recognition of Sandra Bland’s death in the Texas jail where she was imprisoned following a traffic stop in July 2015. These references suggest a theme of familial bereavement that is evoked directly in Say Her Name (2017), a rendering of a funeral bouquet. Packer employs the picture-within-a-picture convention subtly in several canvases: a blurry image of an adult cradling a child appears in Graces (2017), and a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Pietà hovers behind the sitter in April, Restless (2017). Among a few passages defined in lead white is the distinctive border of a Polaroid photograph floating like a ghost and showing only the same deep reddish-brown that surrounds it. One figure ignores us while thrusting his flip-flop-clad feet toward our space the other casts a confrontational glance over his shoulder. With a dark brown line, she barely picks out the faces of two reclining subjects from the rich sienna that permeates the entire surface. In Graces (2017), Packer discards the rules of figure-ground relationships and Euclidian space. In a talk on the eve of the exhibition’s opening, the artist professed a desire to “protect” her sitters, which she does by enveloping them in a painterly field that plays with the viewer’s perception. Packer attempts to deal with this by withholding or obscuring certain facets of her sitters from prying eyes. The show is haunted by the problem of how to picture loss in a way that honors the dead and uplifts the living. In pairing portraits of African Americans with images of funerary bouquets, Packer confronts the spectacle of black death that pervades American culture, while handling her subjects with a remarkable delicacy. The purpose of the vanitas still life is to evoke mortality by tinging lush botanical life with a hint of decay.

Jennifer packer artist