I just returned from walking around my block. I try to do this every morning. I live on a quiet street and it’s fairly predictable. I have noticed that the more that I do the same thing, like walking around my block, the more I can actually see it. My body, the pace of my breath, the sky, the trash, my roommates’ bike locked to the fence, time of day, those black cats, the neighbors and their rhythms, our interactions, our lack of interactions, our crossovers. I am interested in these immediate kinds of relationships and in witnessing their constant fluctuations.

I consider the painting surface as another place where these interactions can exist. I understand the figure-ground relationship as a kind of court: a physical, dimensional space for interruptions, silence, punctures, meet-ups, break-ups, touches of all kinds.

I look toward the physical ground just as much as I do the painted ground, trying to make contact with what is right in front of me. Almonds in my pockets, my roommate’s fork, forgot-to-eat-that-donut, old shirts, shells, skittles, grocery store parking lots; all fair game.

– Jessica Zawadowicz

 

A state of confusion is a useful starting point to find yourself in an artistic encounter. It can be equally useful to find yourself there at the end. This is how the paintings that comprise Jessica Zawadowicz’s exhibition, Crossover, generously position us. Each one shares a never-ending quality that might just as well be described as never-starting. This is not to say that they deploy some sense of infinite scale or excessive amounts of information in the never-ending case, nor are they left barren or hesitant in the case of never-starting. Rather, as finished products, the paintings retain an ongoing-ness that feels akin to superimposed recordings paused long enough to invite you to witness their interconnected logics before moving on to their next phase of development. It’s an inconclusive, unsettling experience, but never overwhelming, with each painting offering us a moment of stabilization against the forces of time, perception, and movement that otherwise render form in a state of constant flux. While such encounters happen across each painting and, indeed, within every component of each painting, the presence of actual objects help amplify this effect.

Was that single popcorn kernel always stuck to that large pink swipe encircling this entire six foot tall canvas? It appears there is a wrist watch camouflaged at the end of that thin slice of color cutting through a large black field. Somehow, an excised section of a parking lot sneaks into view.



In addition to her willingness to introduce various objects to her paintings in the same way she would any other mark, Zawadowicz further complicates viewership through her use of slowness and reorientation. The collisions of disparate materials are the result of a methodical and responsive process of building and rebuilding and rebuilding and rebuilding. For Zawadowicz, these paintings never actually stop rebuilding, or at least, maintaining that potential. Eventually though, her reworkings coalesce into a unified field, but it’s the combination of that compositional unity with a sense of impermanence that allows for this productive suspension of resolution. Reorientation as a tactic stems from the fact that these paintings come from below, only joining us in our verticality when they are done. Though they certainly feel at home on our walls, they also feel like this isn’t where they come from, essentially making each painting a misapplication of the downward-gazing research and production that has gotten them to this stage. It is in this final act of bringing her entire process of moving, looking, gathering, and painting from our feet to our eyes that the grounds shift, allowing the beginning to end and the end to begin.

 

Jessica Zawadowicz lives in Chicago. Her practice is grounded within painting, collage, improvisation, and sport playing. She has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2024), received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and a BFA from The University of the Arts (2019). Recent exhibitions include Trinity Chrisitan College’s Seerveld Gallery (Palos Heights, IL), Patient Info (Chicago, IL), Free Range (Chicago, IL), Weatherproof (Chicago, IL), Color Club (Chicago, IL), Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY), PII Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), among others. Zawadowicz currently lectures in the Painting & Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and also works with kids.