JAMIE PREISZ

SOLO EXHIBITION, January 2023

‘PASSIVE REGRESSIVE’

Made on his recent residency in Portugal, Jamie explores an unconventional blend of Still life and landscape within each work approaching themes of deterioration and consumption in a classical style with a contemporary twist.

The painted pieces began as a singular canvas painted in a gradient from blue to red, the back- ground was used as a large picnic rug by the residents in Messejana where it absorbed the wine spilled that day and the impressions of the river stones it sat upon.
Throughout his six month travels Jamie collected various objects from Portugal, France, Ireland, Germany, Italy and Turkey to depict in carefully curated still life scenes resting upon the shallow water.

The work can be viewed as a series of “islands” in which the objects represent different stages of de- cay. The beginning of the painted pieces is a vibrant blue where the fruit depicted is ripe and the still life subjects are bright and shiny. As the series progresses the fruit starts to rot and the surrounding objects deteriorate. The clouds in the backgrounds of the pieces are a direct reference to the Portu- guese sunsets and offer a sense of atmospheric scale.

The paradoxical approach of blending intimate still life scenes with grand and engrossing landscape is new in Jamie’s practice. Jamie in previous exhibitions has challenged himself to venture across tra- ditional form divisions to elevate his work and challenge his audience. This work features reflections in water a notoriously difficult and technical aspect of painting.

The Exhibition also features a film made in collaboration with Cheyne Tillier-Daly a prominent cin- ematographer and DOP known for his campaigns in the luxury fashion world of Paris. Finally the site specific installation invites the audience to “trip” through the series with surreal whimsy.