Known for her calm-inducing hypnotic sand paintings, Californian artist Jennifer Guidi evokes personal introspection through meditation, as well as external references to nature and light through her work.
Read MoreBorn in Redondo Beach, Guidi grew up between the sandy beaches of the Southern California coast and the desert landscape of the Coachella valley. In high school her family relocated to the East Coast. In 1994 she completed a BFA at Boston University, followed by an MFA in 1998 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before returning to live and work in Los Angeles.
Early in her career, Guidi produced representational paintings of Los Angeles architecture, domestic interiors, people, plants, and spiders. It was only in 2012 that she began to move towards abstraction.
Working primarily with paint on sand Jennifer Guidi uses abstract mark making to create vividly coloured compositions that reference personal influences from California sunsets to spiritual symbols and colour theory.
Jennifer Guidi's first major foray into abstraction are her 'Field Paintings' (2012–2015): monochromatic linear patterns of lines and dots. Inspired by memories of learning various traditional hand-crafts with her grandmother and the spoils of a recent rug-buying spree in Morocco, Guidi sought to recreate the pattern of marks found in the stitching on the back of rugs.
In 2011 Jennifer Guidi was beginning to incorporate sand—perhaps in part a response to the sandy locales of her upbringing. While the urge to work with sand had come long before, it was only after returning from a holiday in Hawaii that she began to fully throw herself into the medium.
Jennifer Guidi's early sand-and-oil paintings in her concurrent Field Paintings exhibitions at LAXART, Los Angeles (2014), and Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York (2014), differed little from the earlier oils. Sharing the same neutral monochromatic colours and even, linear pattern, they represent a limited first step.
Guidi's sand paintings quickly developed into the distinctive form that has come to define her practice. Works such as The Moment of Saturation (Lavender #1MT, Pink Sand SF #1H, Pink and Lavender CS) (2016) present a vibrant, texturally rich surface comprised of sand and acrylic, and a constellation of marks emanating from a single central point.
Guidi creates these works in a calm and meditative process, beginning by slowly brushing onto linen a colourful ground on top of which she then applies a thick, cement-like mixture of oil paint, sand, and acrylic polymers with a trowel. While the mixture is still wet she uses a wooden dowel to create indentations in a mandala-like pattern. These are sometimes filled with contrasting colours, and sometimes crowned with crescent-shaped appliqués of coloured sand.
Many of Jennifer Guidi's paintings, through their rich combination of colours, echo the atmosphere of something like a coastal Californian sunset. Works such as As I Drove You Stretched (Painted Sand SF #1P, Orange Sky) (2017), A New Beginning (2019), and Majestic Mountains (2021) are more readily identifiable as landscapes, albeit seen through a misty haze.
'In the landscape paintings I'm using color, mark-making, and texture to evoke a certain atmosphere' Guidi has explained in an interview with Laura Fried. 'I'm influenced by the color and the light of Los Angeles, a light like no other.'
While abstract mark-making remains central to her practice, in works from 2019 Jennifer Guidi has begun to revisit figurative representation in the form of symbols drawn from a diverse spectrum of traditions. She has referred to colour theory, referencing Ignaz Schiffermüller's colour wheel, and Wolfgang von Goethe's triangle for the 2020 solo show Gemini at Gagosian, New York.
For her show at FIAC with David Kordansky Gallery (2019), the artist presented graphite, watercolour, Flashe, coloured pencil, and acrylic works on paper featuring spiritual symbols from sources ranging from Hinduism and Buddhism to astrology and ancient Egypt.
In an extension of the meditative influences Guidi created the sculptural installation Formation (2022) to be shown at a solo show with David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles. A set of painted bronze sculptures sit amidst raked patterns in a Zen rock garden-inspired setting. Through these and myriad other motifs, Guidi continues to explore personal influences as her practice continues to develop.
Jennifer Guidi has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions internationally.
Solo exhibitions include Full Moon, Long Museum (West Bund), Shanghai (2022); Visible Light / Luce Visibile, Museo d'arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genoa Italy (2017); Field Paintings, LAXART, Los Angeles (2014).
Group exhibitions include Artists Inspired by Music: Interscope Reimagined, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2022); L.A., Maki Collection, Tokyo (2020); No Man's Land: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. (2016).
Jennifer Guidi's artworks for sale at auction can fetch high and unexpected prices. One of Guidi's highest selling works, Elements of All Entitles (Universe Mandala SF #6, Green, Black Sand) (2017), sold for US$ 625,000 in 2021, more than doubling the high estimate. In the same year Orion (Blue Painted Sand SF #1F Mandala) (2016) sold for US$ 441,000 at Phillips, again more than double the estimate.
Jennifer Guidi's website can be found here and her Instagram can be found here.
Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2022
