ANDREW JILKA

From Above and Below

26.03.22 – 19.06.22

CCA Andratx is excited to host the first solo-exhibition of the young NYC-based artist Andrew Jilka (US, 1986) in Spain. The exhibition marks the culmination of the artist’s one-month-stay at the CCA Studios in November 2021 and features a new group of paintings exploring interruptions of stability and relationships between uncertainty, dread, and joy.

The works in From Above and Below propose an approach to the sensorial through an experimentation with repetition and disruption. Jilka’s work employs patterns and geometric oscillations that create a painterly foundation for conceptual and aesthetic challenges. The repetition provides support, order, and stability for the picture plane, like a mantra affirming its own existence. Placed inside of these repetitive patterns are images drawn from childrens books, medieval manuscripts, and other pictorial ephemera. A snake, an earthquake, an oafish man imprisoned in a pillory: these pictures within the paintings bond with a psychedelic framework to create a singular picture plane, a broader physical dimension. This exhibition explores the rhythm of painting, bound to be potentially infinite and setting a stage for drama and tension.

Jilka plays with doubt, perception, and the history of capital “P” painting, positioning disparate forms of representation on the same level, in the same place, and organized in a manner unique to the medium. Images are recontextualized and transferred from the original context into icons on a new painting field. Moreover, both the scale of the work and context dislocation appear to open a breach, all the while the foundation of the painting vibrates and distorts itself, unconcerned with the tension between the icons. The different elements allow each other to exist, but by no means coexist peacefully. As a medium, painting encourages these types of relationships and formal spaces. The physicality of paint on canvas brings these ethereal, esoteric ideas into a tactile and tangible realm.

PRESS MATERIAL here