Jessie Makinson
Makinson's painting, ceramic sculpture, and site-specific installation take inspiration from science fiction and classical mythology. They confuse the boundaries separating human from animal as well as from desire and fear. Her paintings belie concurrent understanding of reality, replacing the world as we know it with an adventurous yet unreliable narrative. Most of her subjects exhibit distortions of power play, with the artist fashioning the figures in subversive means of dress and undress. She also utilises underpainting as a key player in her storytelling in order to unify all the seemingly disparate substances represented. Makinson explained her underpainting on the canvas as it "seeps and drips through like rotten flesh or bruised fruit," which contrasts with the still figures in the foreground. These combined elements infuse her verdant forest scenes with a wild sense of chaos, fantasy, and seduction, evoking the chase between the hunter and the hunted.
Jessie Makinson (b. 1985, London) lives in London. Following her inaugural solo show in 2015 at Fabian Lang’s then project space in London, Makinson had a solo exhibition in winter 2019 at Fabian Lang Gallery, Zürich. Her recent exhibitions include I see you, a group show at Victoria Miro, London; Dangerous Pleasing, at Lyles & King, New York, 2020; The Self, the Work, the World, at Fabian Lang Gallery, Zurich (group show), 2019; Tender Tricks, at Galería OMR, Mexico City, 2019 , a solo show organised with the help of Fabian Lang, Zurich; No Patience for Monuments, at Galerie Perrotin, Seoul, 2019 (group show); a two-person show with artist Stuart Lorimer at Lyles & King, New York, 2018; BioPerversity at Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2018 (group show); Formal Encounters at Nicodim Gallery, Bucharest, 2018 (group show); In the Company Of, curated by Katy Hessel at TJ Boulting, London (group show), 2018; and Dead Eden at Lyles & King, New York, 2018 (group show).