SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.- Anthony Meier announced their representation of New York-based artist Jessie Henson (b. 1977) who employs notions of labor and time in her artmaking, looking for ways that repetitive actions of daily life accrue and build meaning, while pushing material elements to the threshold of fracture and disintegration.
The gallery presented eight of Henson’s new works on paper at Art Basel Miami Beach this December—1-3 alongside work by Etel Adnan, Saif Azzuz, Sarah Cain, Leonardo Drew, Teresita Fernández, Habuba Farah, Claude Lawrence, and others—in anticipation of her first solo show at Anthony Meier in the fall of 2023.
Mining the history of embroidery, Henson uses an industrial sewing machine to draw with thread on paper. As thread accrues, tension begins to overwhelm the paper, warping its surface into furrows and waves that result in undulating, topographical surfaces. Wild bursts of color penetrate the stillness of the paper. The movement of the threaded lines counters the quiet of the surface which bends with the pull of the thread’s stitch and is ruptured by the fast-moving needle. Colors serve as the base of different emotional states of mind: pensive, passionate, furtive. The accumulation becomes an act of putting on armor, building up strength. Paradoxically, if the sewing builds up too much, the paper tears apart, laying bare the fragility of the underlying structure.
The resulting sculptural and rendered forms often resemble environments, maps, landscapes, and scientific diagrams of the natural world. Merging the vernaculars of drawing, sculpture, and tapestry, Henson blurs the boundaries between these worlds.
JESSIE HENSON
Jessie Henson (b. 1977) lives and works in New York, NY and Delhi, NY. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1999 from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C. and a Master of Fine Arts in 2007 from the School of Mason Gross at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
She has had solo exhibitions at Bushell Collective, Delhi, NY and A.I.R. Gallery, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include Thread Hijack, Hunterdon Museum, Clinton, NJ; Lightning Loom, 208 Gallery, Sea Cliff, NY; Surfaces, Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Poetics of the Afterimage, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY; Line, Bruce Gallery, Edinboro University, Endinboro, PA; The Quiet Show, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR; Commissaries, Foam Corp., Los Angeles, CA; Altered Views: Experiencing the Contemporary Landscape, The Loudon House, Lexington, KY; Studio Mates, Front Room Gallery, New York, NY; Converge 45, Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR; Micro to Macro, Cuchifritos, New York, NY; Casa De Empena, Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City; reCOVERED, Frosh and Portmann, New York, NY.
Henson has been an artist in residence at the Bronx Museum of Art, New York, NY; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE; Urban Glass, New York, NY; the Laundromat Project, New York, NY; and Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY.
At Art Basel Miami Beach (Booth B6), Anthony Meier showcased new works by Jessie Henson alongside Libyan-Yurok artist Saif Azzuz, whose paintings explore the interconnected and dynamic practices of Indigenous land management; Teresita Fernández, whose Night Writing series evoke the dramatic and universal experience of looking at the night sky; mountain landscapes by Lebanese painter Etel Adnan; among other gallery artists.
ANTHONY MEIER
Anthony Meier was established in 1984 as a private dealer in the secondary market. Working with both public and private collections, Anthony Meier built a highly regarded international reputation specializing in post- World War II contemporary masters. In 1996 Anthony Meier opened a public gallery space in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. Anthony Meier is active both locally and globally, with membership in the San Francisco Art Dealers Association and the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA), of which founder Anthony Meir currently serves as President.
As a public forum, Anthony Meier mounts five shows per year dedicated to emerging and mid-career artists. The work shown in the gallery is consistent with the quality and visual aesthetic on which the business was founded. Anthony Meier represents: Janine Antoni, Larry Bell, Sarah Cain, Rodrigo Cass, Rosana Castrillo Díaz, Marsha Cottrell, Erica Deeman, Leonardo Drew, The Tony Feher Estate, Teresita Fernández, Joseph Havel, Jessie Henson, Richard Hoblock, Jim Hodges, Zoe Leonard, Donald Moffett, Kristen Morgin, Dave Muller, Jockum Nordström, Rob Reynolds, Kate Shepherd, Jasmin Sian, and Caragh Thuring.
