Well, Look at That

The Hole is thrilled to present its debut solo exhibition of new paintings by Jeremy Shockley, Well, Look at That. Shockley was born in Travelers Rest, SC, a town pocketed in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, known as a haven for tired livestock drovers. No wonder then that he makes nature paintings that each contain a secret respite for the eye. Shockley, who has a background in art conservation, was helping to restore a Lucio Fontana painting when he decided to incorporate the renowned Spatialist's slashed-canvas imagery into his own practice. After experimenting with actual cuts he arrived at his signature tromp l'oeil technique, beginning each canvas in big exuberant strokes with four- or five-inch housepainting brushes, then progressing to eyelash-thin ones to simulate frayed threads along fake slits in skies and oceans. He describes his first large series—painted flaps suggesting two eyes and a smiling mouth—as a response to the renaissance in portraiture that coincided with Covid lockdown. "I put faces on the beautiful landscapes as a way of saying that in the future people may want to go back to looking at them instead of people. We might be all right," he says, "but perhaps the landscapes won't be." The works in this show push the theme further: the natural world becomes a curtain to be tugged, a veneer to be peeled back, or a series of ever-darkening portals that nonetheless contain a dose of optimism. We are invited to think about alternate dimensions, about the structural materiality of the painted canvas, and about our kitten-like propensity to just hang in there. Jeremy Shockley (b.1982) considers painting a form of storytelling. Influenced by the literary techniques of magical realist writers, he renders the impossible and the surreal in a matter-of-fact way. He lives and works in Los Angeles.