NEW YORK, April 18, 2024—Gagosian is pleased to announce Idealism Is Unavoidable, an exhibitionof Good Paintings by Neil Jenney.

Balancing idealism and realism, Jenney’s landscape paintings are highly stylized and rendered with acareful attention to detail. Begun in 1971, the Good Paintings are differentiated from Jenney’s previousbody of work, which he designated as Bad Paintings (1969–70) after curator Marcia Tucker’s 1978New Museum exhibition ‘Bad’ Painting, which included his work. Painted in acrylic in a loose,gestural style, the Bad Paintings represent relationships between people and things, while upendingpreconceptions of connoisseurship and “good taste.” The Good Paintings are instead exacting studiesof nature in oil paint on wooden panels.

Jenney’s Good Paintings impart the experience of observing the North American landscape atclose range, in contrast with the expansive vistas of untamed wilderness typical of the historicalHudson River School. While describing the natural world, many of the works also remind us thatthe environment is never far removed from human intervention. Jenney’s handmade black woodenframes are integral to these works, which he regards as ‘painted sculpture.’ Playing off the classicalconception of a painting as a window into fictive space, the frames create an architectural foreground,asserting their status as physical objects. The works’ mediated nature is further emphasised by theinclusion of titles stenciled in uppercase serif lettering.

In the Good Paintings, ‘good’ is both a formal and a conceptual label as seen through Jenney’s refineduse of paint and colour, and his approach to themes of universal significance, such as the artist’scultural role, climate change, and notions of societal progress. Depicting a sky without a horizon,Atmosphere (1985) emphasises diffuse, glowing sunlight. Stretching over twelve and a half feet widein a narrow horizontal format, North America Divided (1992–99) pictures a tree stump and bands ofcirrus clouds together with a worn wooden fence, strands of barbed wire, and the remains of wiresGagosian to Present Idealism Is Unavoidable, an Exhibition of Good Paintings by Neil Jenney inNew York, Opening May 2Neil Jenney, North America Divided, 1992–99, oil on wood, in painted wood artist’s frame, 39 1/4 × 152 1/2 × 3 3/4 inches(99.7 × 387.4 × 9.5 cm) © Neil JenneyDownload Press Imagesand porcelain insulators indicating that it was once electrified. Related paintings feature divisionswithin the landscape, with fence posts, paths, stone walls, and other constructions demarcating space.

North American Aquatica (2006–07) renders a body of water in turbulent brushstrokes of deep blueand white, inspired by Baltic currents. North American Summer (2019–20) presents the forms of amaple tree’s leaves and branches against a background of mottled brushstrokes in brown and brightgreen that suggest a manicured lawn, the composition’s striking vantage point establishing contrastbetween its natural and artificial aspects. With a sense of subjectivity that verges on the mythological,the Good Paintings convey the coexistence of their subjects in both the real and the imagined world.

Press release courtesy Gagosian