About
Colors charge us externally and internally. I translate these colors into works every day. On an intuitive level, I am guided by the colors in nature.
—Jennifer Guidi
Light and color pervade every aspect of Jennifer Guidi’s work. The Los Angeles artist’s radiant, mandala-like paintings are marked by tonal and chromatic shifts that operate in concert with richly textured surfaces. The effect echoes natural phenomena and undergirds a powerful archetypal symbolism. Guidi mixes sand into her paints—she uses both oils and acrylics—to produce immersive abstract compositions that borrow from the pared-down structures of Minimalism while evoking ancient theories of energy and perception.
Born in Redondo Beach, California, Guidi received a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. On moving to Los Angeles, she was immediately struck by the city’s distinctive hazy light and blocky 1950s architecture. Basing her early paintings on her own photographs of local domestic interiors, she became increasingly interested in the colors and textures of her subjects’ walls. Following a 2012 visit to Morocco, she began to pursue a more abstract approach, drawing inspiration from the heavy stitching and irregular undersides of the country’s handmade rugs. She made her first abstract “dot paintings” that year, applying small dabs of white paint to black grounds.
Guidi began incorporating sand into her panels in 2013, using sticks found on the beach in Hawaii as simple mark-making tools. She then developed a system of underpainting in which she first applies a thick layer of sand to the surface of the canvas; while this is still wet, she makes marks with a dowel in controlled and repetitive movements, often adding sand and paint along the edges of the divots. The result of this intensely physical process is a hypnotic swirl of saturated color that is at once contemporary and timeless, prompting consideration of the diversity of cultural and corporeal meanings that have been assigned to shape and pattern.
Photo: Brica Wilcox
#JenniferGuidi
Website
Exhibitions
Jennifer Guidi: Mountain Range
Invited to exhibit at Château La Coste in Provence, Jennifer Guidi created a new body of work that engaged with the cantilevered architecture of the gallery building, designed by Richard Rogers, and with the artistic heritage of the region. Amie Corry reports on the evolution of the exhibition and on its place within Guidi’s larger practice.
Jennifer Guidi: Mountain Range
In this video, produced by Château La Coste, Jennifer Guidi discusses her latest solo exhibition, Mountain Range, conceived in response to the architecture of Château La Coste’s Richard Rogers Gallery and the surrounding landscape of Provence in the South of France. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with Gagosian, is now on view through September 3, 2023.
Shortlist
Twelve Tracks: Jennifer Guidi
Jennifer Guidi shares a selection of the music she listens to in the studio and speaks about its connection to her meditative painting process.
Jennifer Guidi
The artist speaks with Laura Fried about her most recent paintings, the symbol of the serpent, and her evolving relationship to color.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2020
The Spring 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #412 (2003) on its cover.
(RED) Auction 2018
Theaster Gates and Sir David Adjaye join Bono to spearhead (RED)’s third auction of contemporary art and design, raising funds for the global fight against AIDS. As Gagosian prepares the preview exhibition, Gillian Pistell looks at the urgency of this vital cause.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
Art Basel Hong Kong 2024
March 27–30, 2024
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
www.artbasel.com
Gagosian is participating in Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 with a selection of works by international contemporary artists. The works on view, which embrace a dizzying variety of subjects and approaches, see the participating artists identify fresh ways to disrupt established histories of abstraction and figuration, and instill sculptural and painterly representations of the natural world with complex cultural significance.
Sarah Sze, Turning and Turning, 2024 © Sarah Sze. Photo: Maris Hutchinson
Auction
Iovine and Young Center for High School Education Benefit Auction
Online auction: February 13–27, 2024
Live auction: February 27, 2024
This online benefit auction, hosted by Sotheby’s for the Iovine and Young Center for High School Education, features eleven donated works by contemporary artists including Jennifer Guidi and Ed Ruscha. The Iovine and Young Center is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and all proceeds from the sale will directly support its educational programming and contribute to the advancement of its impactful initiatives.
Jennifer Guidi, Into the Expanse of the Sky, 2024 © Jennifer Guidi
In Conversation
Jennifer Guidi
Heidi Zuckerman
Sunday, January 28, 2024, 3pm
Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California
ocma.art
Join the Orange County Museum of Art for a conversation between Jennifer Guidi and OCMA CEO and director Heidi Zuckerman on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition And so it is., on view through February 18, 2024. The pair will discuss exploring the spiritual and metaphysical world, the importance of place, and Guidi’s rich history growing up in Orange County. The event is free to attend.
Installation view, Jennifer Guidi: And so it is., Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California, September 15, 2023–February 18, 2024. Artwork © Jennifer Guidi. Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio
Museum Exhibitions
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Jennifer Guidi
And so it is.
September 15, 2023–February 18, 2024
Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California
ocma.art
And so it is.—Jennifer Guidi’s first solo institutional exhibition in the United States—surveys the artist’s work over the last ten years and features a number of new paintings. Using a methodical system in which sand is applied directly to the surface of the canvas while wet, Guidi creates a ritualistic, repetitive choreography—one entirely her own. Focusing on the importance of place, especially evident within Guidi’s embrace of the colors of California—the fleeting pink and red of its sunrises and sunsets, the hazy light of Los Angeles—the show reveals an intricate body of work that operates as its own energy source.
Installation view, Jennifer Guidi: And so it is., Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California, September 15, 2023–February 18, 2024. Artwork © Jennifer Guidi. Photo: Yubo Dong, ofstudio
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Jennifer Guidi
Mountain Range
June 20–September 3, 2023
Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France
chateau-la-coste.com
Jennifer Guidi has conceived a unique installation of her work in response to the architecture of Château La Coste’s Richard Rogers Gallery and the context of the Provence region in the South of France. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with Gagosian, features two large paintings, hanging back-to-back and suspended in midair, which bisect the gallery and playfully interrupt the expected vista of the Luberon mountain range with Guidi’s imagined landscapes. On the walls, smaller mountainscapes, acting almost as windows, lead visitors through the space and provide unique vignettes rich in color, form, and texture.
To learn more watch Guidi speak about the project in a video produced by Château La Coste for Gagosian Quarterly.
Installation view, Jennifer Guidi: Mountain Range, Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France, June 20–September 3, 2023. Artwork © Jennifer Guidi. Photo: Frédéric Desimoni
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Jennifer Guidi
Full Moon
July 1–October 16, 2022
Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai
www.thelongmuseum.org
Full Moon—Jennifer Guidi’s first solo institutional exhibition in China—surveys the artist’s work to date and features a number of new paintings. The exhibition’s title emphasizes the cosmological and mystical roots of Guidi’s practice. Her abstract compositions refer to the natural world literally and visually as she mixes sand with paint to depict arresting natural and metaphysical phenomena.
Installation view, Jennifer Guidi: Full Moon, Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai, July 1–August 21, 2022. Artwork © Jennifer Guidi
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Artists Inspired by Music
Interscope Reimagined
January 30–February 13, 2022
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
www.lacma.org
To mark the thirtieth anniversary of Interscope Records, the company invited artists to select albums and songs from Interscope’s groundbreaking catalogue and fostered exchanges between artists and musicians to generate resonant pairings. The exhibition, which includes more than fifty works, brings an intergenerational group of visual artists into dialogue with iconic musicians from the last three decades, providing a fresh perspective on influential music for the present moment. Work by John Currin, Jennifer Guidi, Damien Hirst, Titus Kaphar, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, and Anna Weyant is included.
Jennifer Guidi, Seeking Hearts (Black MT, Pink Sand, Pink CS, Pink Ground), 2021 © Jennifer Guidi. Photo: Brica Wilcox