Mark Strowbridge

Jennifer Maestre’s pencil sculptures are a highlight of Jen 11 at Uppercase

The Jen 11 show, named after the 11 contributing artists named Jennifer, tries to unify itself with a question: What does a faddish name from the mid- to late-20th century bring to an artist’s art?

Curated by one of the featured artists, Jen Khoshbin, and managed by Uppercase’s Janine Vangool, each artist’s work is labelled with a “Hello, my name is…” sticker, a clever twist on the theme devised by Vangool. The organization of the works in the gallery, though, is awkward. Some are unlabelled and too distantly separated from similar work, one of Bradford’s paintings for example, and others too close in proximity to objects not involved in the exhibition — from Hsieh’s attractive figurines and portraits to stuffed plush toys. Thus, there is some confusion for the viewer when navigating the show, knowing that 11 artists with 11 different styles are supposed to be on display here.

To assist the viewer, Vangool has put together a lovely accompanying book ($15), which gives a good photographic survey of the breadth of each artists’ works, but no titles for the pieces themselves. In doing so, however, it informs the viewer in such a way as to ask why certain pieces were chosen over others. One example is Garrido’s Rorschach-like black-and-white inks. They use white space for great emotional effect, but their similarity begs the following question: Why couldn’t one of the wildly energetic coloured pieces shown in the book have been chosen?

The photographic contributions are perhaps the weakest aspect of the show. Gotch’s lone contribution — a panel of snapshots — clumsily suggests some kind of suburban isolation, and Altman’s portraits of a young girl are too airy and sentimental to be highly engaging.

The most original and stand-out pieces of the show, however, are Jen Maestre’s sculptures, made of sharpened, pared-down leads and pencils, invisibly beaded together. The beautiful sea foam colour palette of teal, blue and green gives the three-legged piece a befittingly dominant presence.

As a story of what makes a Jen, this show is not successful, but there is some excellent art here. That quality is reason enough to see the show, regardless of the conceptual intentions.