8-bridges
Jay DeFeo
October 1–31, 2020
I’ve always got to get down there and show what is underneath everything.
—Jay DeFeo
Gagosian is pleased to present works by Jay DeFeo on 8-bridges, a newly launched online platform created to highlight artists and galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area. Honoring the rich history of the Bay Area art scene, the inaugural presentation features selected works from the exhibition Transcending Definition: Jay DeFeo in the 1970s, on view at Gagosian, San Francisco, through December 11, 2020. DeFeo spent most of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area and remains an influential figure in the region. The 8-bridges presentation focuses on the artist’s output in the decade following the completion of her pivotal work The Rose (1958–66), when she was based in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. In her paintings, photographs, and works on paper of the 1970s, DeFeo fused the representational with the abstract, permeating her images of everyday objects—a camera tripod, a jewelry fragment, a shoe tree—with a sense of mystery. The artist described her works of this period as “beings suspended in space and time” that “transcend the definition of the literal objects from which they are derived.”
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Jay DeFeo, Figure V (Tripod series), 1976 © 2020 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick
Related News
In Conversation
Jay DeFeo’s Generation
Suzanne Hudson, Dana Miller, and Clifford Ross
Tuesday, November 17, 2020, 2pm EST
Join Gagosian for a conversation on Jay DeFeo with Los Angeles–based art historian and critic Suzanne Hudson, Seattle-based art historian and independent curator Dana Miller, and New York–based artist Clifford Ross. The trio will discuss the unique place DeFeo occupies in art history, shaped by a diverse body of work that defies categorization, a practice situated outside of the American art centers of New York and Los Angeles, and relationships with other artists of her generation. To join, register at zoom.us.
Jay DeFeo, Lotus Eater No. 1, 1974 © 2020 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick
Video
Jay DeFeo’s
The Rose
Discussing Jay DeFeo’s monumental painting The Rose (1958–66), now in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, are Dana Miller, curator of the Whitney’s permanent collection, David A. Ross, former director, and Lisa Phillips, former curator, with Leah Levy, director of the Jay DeFeo Trust (now the Jay DeFeo Foundation). They describe the significance of this pivotal work and detail the Whitney’s efforts to conserve it.
Still from “Jay DeFeo's The Rose”
Panel Discussion
Catching Ideas in Process
Jay DeFeo’s Photography
Wednesday, November 18, 2020, 8–9pm EST
The medium of photography enabled Jay DeFeo to further explore the themes and forms she continually returned to in her diverse practice, and to capture her own process, resulting in images that blur the line between documentation and art. Organized by the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, this panel discussion brings together Corey Keller, curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in conversation with artists Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Rayyane Tabet to discuss this lesser-known body of DeFeo’s oeuvre and the ways in which her highly experimental practice continues to resonate with photographers working today. The conversation will be moderated by Emily Markert, a curatorial fellow at the Wattis Institute. To register for the event, visit eventbrite.com.
Jay DeFeo, Untitled, 1973 © 2020 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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