Water, Liquor, Hair

My class and I had a mandatory excursion to the Chelsea galleries yesterday. We were lucky enough to have a private visit to Anna Kustera Gallery, which was closed during installation for the opening tonight, but we managed to get in before it was open to the public and meet with the artist. You're hearing it here first people!

The current exhibition is called Water, Liquor, Hair. It is a solo show for painter Julia Jacquette (who went to the same high school I did! LaGuardia represent!). This show, is so "brand spanking new" says the artist, that I could not even find images online of her work currently on display. If it's not even online yet, you know how exclusive this is. The opening is happening right now, as I type this, so unless someone tweets an iPhone photo to google before I'm done posting, you'll just have to go see it. I do so wish I could show you all the enormous alcohol paintings! And the small one of the Chanel necklace! However I simply cannot as I lack the means to do so!

Water, Liquor, Hair

Julia Jacquette

Anna Kustera Gallery

520 West 21^st Street New York

Alexa Strautmanis

Julia Jacquette is a brilliant oil painter. Her newest and current show is called Water, Liquor, Hair, and is quite self-explanatory. Jacquette uses advertising for inspiration and reference, specifically, the ads toward the front of magazines, which are almost exclusively for high end liquor, jewelry, shampoo and perfumes.

A palpable common denominator between these products and the way they are advertised is a certain chic wetness. Shampoo ads have inhumanely shiny, sleek hair, blonde and brunette multidimensional shades, perfumes are often photographed in shallow films of water, or with a model fresh out of the beach, pool, etc… liquor ads obviously encompass all that comes with a hot day and a cool drink; ice cubes, condensation, carbonation and bubbles, pouring a smooth liquid in super slow motion into a highball that seems to go on forever, fast cars on shiny watered down highways, these are all the subtle nuances that provoke us as consumers to buy these products, as well as the motivation behind every brushstroke of each painting in this show.

Upon entering the gallery, two paintings are on opposite walls, one is a tarmac with a vivid reflection of the airplane, like it’s a mirage on a 100 plus degree day, while the second piece is an abstracted close up of suspended bubbles in a cool blue liquid. Both of these pieces are so different, yet evoke the same feeling in the viewer: thirst. Thirsting for a drink, for international travel, for the good life.

As if I was not impressed enough with the foyer, as one turns the corner into the main gallery space, it is a feast for the eyes, to say the least. You are immediately met with two ends of the spectrums of scale and depiction. Smaller works on panel are photorealistic squares of hair so shiny and bouncy it gave me The Urge to Herbal. A finger of whiskey hanging on its own in the corner begged me to pick it up and sip it contently in the warm room surrounding it. A Chanel necklace around a blonde’s neck taunted me, in the way a popular girl in high school would, yet I want acceptance and approval.

Amongst these gem-like smaller pieces are enormous, wall-sized abstractions of various rums and spirits. An avid fan of the sauce, each one spoke to me; ‘Mojito, Bacardi with lime, whiskey on the rocks’. The center one, probably the most non-objective of the group, made me squeal with joy on the inside as I thought ‘looking down a huge glass of white wine’, and the artist graciously informs us that it is indeed, a glass of wine from above. Something about the stem-like dark spot in the center seemed very familiar to me, maybe too familiar.

The hues in the room are comfortable and household. The shades of the hair mimic the colors of the liquor. Each painting, whether large and abstract or small and representative hold the same levels of precision and meticulousness; it takes a talented hand indeed to paint strands of hair, pearls, airplanes, and mixed drinks with the same conviction. Anyone who has ever flipped through a Cosmopolitan or enjoyed one at an airport bar would be enamored with the work of Julia Jacquette.