March 5 - September 13, 2020

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Amos Eno Gallery is pleased to present Deep Green Query, an exhibition of new calligraphic works on paper by Candace Jensen. An opening reception was held on Friday, March 6, from 5:30-7:30 PM at 56 Bogart Street in Brooklyn, NY. A virtual gallery tour was held on April 18, 2020. The full discussion can be viewed here: Candace Jensen Virtual Gallery Tour. Details of the works on view are available on Artsy. The exhibit closed on Sunday, September 13th with a private, socially-distanced closing reception.

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A Poetics of Ecology Salon was held on Friday, March 27, from 7-9 PM. The event features readings by guest poets John James, Lynn Xu and Timothy Donnelly as well as conversation & refreshments. Limited edition poetry broadsides will be available for sale at the closing event.

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Jensen uses hand-made inks, herbs, pigments, and gold leaf on paper to create decorated essays and book-arts musings in the tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Her explicit intent is to expand the scope of illumination’s cultural reliquary beyond that of religion and anthropocentrism. In lieu of illuminating archetypal content such as Abrahamic scriptures and humanistic poetry, which centralize human experience and Progress, Jensen’s Gaia Illuminations articulate interdependence and decentralize humanity’s vantage, even human language. The works offer an alternative canon of cyclical and interrelated systems, or Gaia theory, and old myths reinterpreted in gold and ink for new eyes.

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Deep Green Query features the artist’s continued investigation into Deep Ecology, and the reconsideration of human spiritual relationships to the earth through critical theory and empathic writing. Deep Ecology, or Deep Green Theory, is an environmental philosophy and social movement based on the belief that humans must radically change their relationship to nature from one that values nature solely for its usefulness to human beings, to one that recognizes that nature has an inherent value outside of the false objectivity of human perspective. Legibility, language, nomenclature, storytelling and symbolic abstraction all figure into Jensen’s playful, yet deadly serious treatment of these complex ideas and ideologies.

Candace Jensen is a visual artist, writer, calligrapher and practicing Tantric. She has exhibited work in Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York, and Antwerp. Her artwork has been featured in Studio Visit Magazine, as well as the Royal Academy of the Arts biannual KoMASK Masters Printmaking publication. Jensen focuses on building and uplifting art community and regenerative systems through both her artwork and activism. She is a current artist member at Amos Eno Gallery, where she collaborates as an exhibiting artist and curator. Jensen earned her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA, in 2018, and her BFA from Tyler School of Art in 2008, also in Philadelphia. She lives and works in Southern Vermont. Deep Green Query is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York.

 

Image: Candace Jensen, Against the Anthropocene (Gaia Illumination Series) -Words by TJ Demos, 2019. Ink, shellac, gold leaf, graphite, turmeric, gouache and watercolor on Clairefontaine paper. Diptych of (2) 9.5 x 12 inches.