They demand our presence and that we direct our attention to the visual frequencies at which they resonate in and among us. Echoing the title of the exhibition, they are intensities that are not confined to the eyes: they are spatial and sonic intensities as well. It is a play of light heightened by the artist’s predilection for painting in monochrome a choice that amplifies her uncanny ability to use multiple gradations of a single colour in tandem with the creation of negative space in canvases that seem to transcend the two-dimensionality of painting.ĭeep crimsons, sultry yellows, eerie greens, vibrant pinks - Packer’s iridescent colour palette suffuses her paintings and directs patterns of light toward viewers in ways that solicit a depth of feeling and an intensity of presence. Standing at a distance, hovering as close as the guards would allow, or wandering from end to end along a canvas to observe their texture and detail - I was captivated both by how light illuminated the works as well as the almost magical ways they appeared to emit their own forms of light. While visiting the exhibition, I found myself orbiting them rotationally, navigating other visitors in the gallery as I attempted to position myself at multiple angles in relation to each work. The luminous hues of Packer’s paintings stop you in your tracks, then pull you in with gravitational force. It expresses both respite and affirmation through an opacity that seems both practiced and protected. Directed downward, it is calm yet searching. He rests on an abstracted structure that, from one angle, supports him above a golden floor.įrom another angle, it appears to suspend him above the flow of a molten river.īut his gaze is tranquil. He sits swaddled in a crimson red hoodie that blazes like an ember through the center of the canvas. These two bookending events transformed an accidental encounter into a serendipitous gift. When I visited The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing a few months later at the Whitney Museum in New York, it confirmed that error with resounding effect. But as soon as I stepped into the gallery, I realised that had been a deeply regrettable mistake. At the time, I was racing to meet a deadline for submitting my book manuscript, which meant I was politely declining any and all requests. When I saw Packer’s name at the entrance, I remembered an invitation earlier in the year to engage the artist’s work. I had come to see an exhibition on display in the North Gallery, and being so close, it felt wrong not to wander over to the other side of Kensington Gardens to see what was on display at the South Gallery. I was visiting Serpentine on a sun-drenched summer day, on my first post-pandemic visit to London. My first encounter with the work of Jennifer Packer was almost an accident. Campt, recounts her time suspended in the immersive paintings of Jennifer Packer visiting the exhibition The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing at Serpentine and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Renowned Black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art, Tina M.
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