PRESENTATION: Kathleen Jacobs-Lumen

Kathleen Jacobs seeks inspiration in nature. Her work starts among the trees, onto which she attaches blank canvases. While in direct contact with the bark, she leaves the canvases at the mercy of nature for up to three years, exposed to the elements. She waits as wind, rain and sun leave their imprint on the surface, re-wraps them onto different trees, and finally removes the canvas to soak in water and stretch onto bars – the surface is now ready for her intervention.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Karsten Greve Archive

For “Lumen”, her first solo exhibition in Paris, Kathleen Jacobs, presents works on paper and on canvas produced between 1990 and 2023. Poetic and subtle, Kathleen Jacobs’ work is rooted in her personal experience, forged between tradition and artistic encounters. Her fascination with trees, first of all, began with “In Search of Times Past” (1959), a work by the Austrian Bauhaus photographer Herbert Bayer. The photograph, with its surrealist accents, representing a settlement of aspens superimposed with eyes, hung on the wall of her father’s office, where it gradually permeated her subconscious and, later, her art. Then came the decisive influence of her four-year trip to China, between 1984 and 1988, when she learned the art of calligraphy from the Chinese artist Huang Yongyu (recognized in China as a Living National Treasure). In China, through that practice, Kathleen Jacobs learned the value of practicing and learning, the Tao way. She also learned the meaning of space in painting, particularly through the landscapes of the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties, characterized by consecutive bare spaces and the absence of a horizon. The watercolors and ink-on-paper works displayed in the exhibition are figurative works reflecting those oriental traditions, whether in the representation of landscapes and nature or in the mastery of lines and their movement. Calligraphy taught her to use her whole body to guide the paintbrush, in a perpetual awareness of its movement and her intention.  Her first works thus naturally represent landscapes, with trees as the main subjects. However, soon after her return to the United States, in 1989, Kathleen Jacobs realized that, in her desire to copy trees, her interpretation and expertise could never do her subject justice. She explained: “I’ve spent many years outside painting and making woodcuts. After some time, I realized that I should use what was there (physically) to make the work… It was an interesting experience, collaborating with trees, weather, and time to paint these images. I allowed the surface to speak for itself”. Huang taught her the importance of “going to the source”. In that way, the subject of her works became their base. She then developed her novel rubbing technique, which enabled her to transfer the marks of tree bark onto the canvas, inspired by the woodblock-printing technique she had learned from the Japanese-American artist Hiroki Morinoue upon her return to the United States.

The almost ritualistic creative process upon which her practice is based consists in rolling and stapling different-sized linen canvases vertically around meticulously-selected tree trunks or branches. Once affixed, the canvases are covered with a first layer of paint, generally white. Then the artist begins to rub a piece of canvas covered in pigments and oil paint (oil stick) over the surface of the canvas, from the bottom to the top, to capture the natural textures and contours of the bark. The canvases stay in place for several months, and up to three years. They are naturally affected by the passage of time and the weather, in a uniquely Taoist process: “act with no action; use the technique of no technique”. Kathleen Jacobs often visits the trees to add an extra layer of paint at the right moment. It is a daily, weekly even monthly activity, each painting a meticulous construction born of many stages and a great deal of patience. As she meticulously applies the paint, layer upon layer, patterns emerge. Once separated from their plant base, the canvases are placed in the artist’s workshop. There, Kathleen Jacobs continues to apply watered-down oil and acrylic paint, either to the front or the back of the canvas, guiding the pigments through the weft. Her paintings are generally monochromatic, the artist limiting her palette to various hues of white, cold blue, yellow and red. Finally, the artist rotates the canvases so the vertical motif of the lines of the trunk appears horizontal once the canvas is stretched over its frame. For Kathleen Jacobs, that makes the architecture of the lines stand out, giving the work the appearance of a landscape and making the abstract visible. Looking at one of her works is like looking out a plane window at an aerial perspective where there are no landmarks and the horizons are numerous. Her ultimate goal is for her viewers to look inwards, to think and allow their imagination free rein, in an almost hypnotic symbiosis with the lines, colors and fabric. There is an ambiguity, accentuated by the square format of her works and the choice of their titles, deliberately abstract so as not to influence viewers’ interpretations. Formed by five capital letters, the titles are a direct reference to her experience as a pilot: they are aeronautical fixes used by aviators to find their way in the sky, but that have no particular meaning other than geographic, like a coordination point in the universe used to mark crossings in the sky.

Photo: Kathleen Jacobs, Lumen, 2021, Oil on linen, 132.1 x 137.2 cm / 52 x 54 in, © Kathleen Jacobs, Photo: Lisa Vollmer, Courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve Cologne, Paris, St. Moritz

Info: Galerie Karsten Greve, 5 rue Debelleyme, Paris, France, Duration: 7/9-21/10/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, https://galerie-karsten-greve.com/