JACQUELINE HUMPHRIES

Education and Early Years

Humphries was born in New Orleans, USA in 1960.

In 1984, she received a summer scholarship to study at Yale University in New Haven. After graduating from the Parsons School of Design in New York with an MFA in 1985, Humphries was selected to attend an Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1986.

Artworks

Humphries’ early paintings—comprising fields of repetitive, grid-like dots—considered abstract expressionism’s disordered energy as a constructive tool for unpacking of painting today.

Silver Paintings (2000s)

One of Humphries’ signature bodies of work is her ‘Silver Paintings’ series, for which she uses metallic colours to play with light and reflections. The shimmering, metallic paint—repeatedly layered then scraped away from the canvas—lends the series a somewhat industrial aesthetic, while dark marks laid atop the layered grounds are nods towards the gestural tendencies of abstract expressionism.

Black Light Paintings (2010s)

During the 2010s, Humphries began working with fluorescent tones and black paint. To make these ‘Black Light Paintings’, Humphries worked at a high speed in a pitch-black room, spraying canvases with gallons of paint which spattered and oozed to form deeply textured artworks. When viewed under black light, the works evoke the energy of dance and rave culture of the 1980s.

Emoticon Paintings

In 2017, Jacqueline Humphries exhibited a series of ten new paintings at Greene Naftali Gallery in New York. In these large-scale works, Humphries references the digital world by using grid-like stencils and emoticon icons of smiling and frowning faces, layered in swathes of paint.

Awards and Accolades

In 1989, Humphries was awarded the Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellowship. In 1992, she was presented with the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. In 1995 and 1999, Humphries was awarded grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation respectively.

In 2014, Humphries’ work was included in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Her work is in the collections of MoMA, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; and Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris; among others.

Exhibitions

Humphries has held solo exhibitions at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2021—22); Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2020—21); Dia Bridgehampton, New York (2019—20); Modern Art, London (2018); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2015); and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York (2009).

Group exhibitions include Infinite Games 2, Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2021); Infinite Games, Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2020—21); Arrangement in Gray, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris (2020—21); Ice and Fire: A Benefit Exhibition in Three Parts, The Kitchen, New York (2020—21); Painters Reply: Experimental Painting in the 1970s and Now, Lisson Gallery, New York (2019); Abstraction Today: Mapping the Invisible World, Tobias Mueller Modern Art, Zürich (2018); and In Tune with the World, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2018).

Phoebe Bradford | Ocula | 2021