Jennifer Caine: Retrieval

exhibition dates: May 22 - June 16, 2012

reception: Thursday, May 24, 6 - 8 pm

For Jennifer Caine, the function of painting is to explore the relationship between the external physical world and its parallel in memory, thought, and emotion. In the “Retrieval” paintings she considers how the contours of memories change when revisited, altered by the present and by the very act of remembering. She builds and excavates the matte, fresco-like surfaces of her paintings, allowing marks and fragments of color to crystallize, seemingly on the brink of dissolving. She writes “as memory is fluid and labile, so are my paintings, informed by current decisions and by the history and legacy of the underlying layers.” In the words of Boston Globe reviewer Cate McQuaid, Caine’s “tremulous abstract paintings…speak as much to visceral sensation as they do to vision. Caine builds up her canvases with paint, usually finishing off with layers of white, then she scrapes and sands and reveals what lies beneath….If you are looking for some thing to see, you will miss it, as scoops and shards of emerging color send your eye cascading over the entire canvas…like searching for something in a sea of downy feathers.” Caine received her MFA from Boston University in 2005. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, at venues including the Soprafina Gallery in Boston, CoLab in Austin, TX, Guerilla Arts in Dallas, the National Academy Museum, FPAC Gallery in Boston and the Strauss Gallery at Dartmouth College. Caine is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Constantin Alajalov Award from Boston University, and has been selected for inclusion in 100 Boston Painters, published in 2012 (forthcoming) by Schiffer Books.