Stills from “The End of Summer” is a cohesive exhibition of new paintings focusing on the cinematic concept of mise-en-scène or the visual arrangement of everything that will appear within the frame. Edelman’s compositions usually include a human subject in the foreground of the painting viewing the scene. This generates layers of fictional spaces, which may be film screens, paintings, photos, or distant vistas. We are watching the figures have a visual experience, yet reading their thoughts from their deportment is difficult: they are suspended between deep thought and boredom, existential concern and indifference, melancholic isolation and engagement. The exuberance of Edelman’s colors and elegance of her brushwork are echoed by the timeless Mediterranean locations, such as views from the poolside of a villa on a bluff and an opulently decorated seaside terrace. Late 19th century and early 20th century artists such as Cézanne, Degas, and Rothko have stylistically influenced her work. She is equally informed by the development of visual culture that occurred in this period and is ongoing today, starting with the flâneur as defined by Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin: a modern spectator whose visual consumption of the urban experience defines his artistic identity. In a world saturated by screens and social media, Edelman examines the contemporary flâneur, a familiar alienated archetype searching for meaning.
Jessie Edelman was born in 1986 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA in 2013 from Yale University and her BA in 2008 from Skidmore College. She has had solo exhibitions at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago and Robert Blumenthal in New York, and she was in a two-person exhibition with David Humphrey at the Suburban in Milwaukee.
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