Jennie C. Jones, Shhh #3

Jennie C. Jones
Shhh #3
2010
Professional noise cancelling instrument cable, wire and felt
52-1/2 x 6 x 5 inches (133.35 x 15.24 x 12.7 cm)

Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist from APT

About the Artwork

Created in 2010, Shhh #3 is rooted in the practice of drawing that characterized Jones’s early work during the first years of the twenty-first century. Increasingly attracted by the field of sculpture and interested in the use of nontraditional materials, the artist began to transform the lines of her drawings into instrumental cables and to substitute the reduced surface of the paper for that of the wall. A testimony of this process, the present work can be regarded both as a wall relief and a drawing in space.

Jones’ minimalist composition in Shhh #3 recalls Richard Serra’s Belts (1966-67), a work for which the American sculptor 'simply' presented a group of these objects hanging from the walls of the gallery. It is precisely the simplicity of Jones’s cable compositions that best links her practice to that of Minimalist art. Asked about this particular connection, the artist commented: “There is a poetic nature to minimalism that is about striking a balance between full and empty. […] A simple line or single extended note could have a weight and simultaneous lightness. Something being busy or crowded does not make it more fulfilling to me.”

About the Artist

Jennie C. Jones (b. 1968) received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991 and her Masters of Fine Art degree from Rutgers in 1996. Her awards include a Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2000 and a Creative Capital grant in 2008. She has received The William H. Johnson Prize in 2008, was the 2012 recipient of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Wein Prize, and most recently in 2016 is the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Robert Rauschenberg Award.

Solo exhibitions include Jennie C. Jones: Compilation, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX, (2015); Directions: Jennie C. Jones: Higher Resonance, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2013); Absorb/Defuse, The Kitchen (2011); Counterpoint, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2011); RED, BIRD, BLUE, at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2009). Selected group shows include The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now currently up at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (2016-2017) that travelled from Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2015); and Silence, The Menil Collection, Houston (2012).

Her works are housed in the collections of The Deutsche Bank, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among others.