About the Exhibit - Meditations
Andrew Jilka’s exhibit, Mediations, was on view at Team Gallery in Soho, New York from November 14th 2019 – January 11th 2020. Since it appears the pandemic may have gotten the best of Team Gallery and they have allegedly closed, this post can be a little tribute to one of the many great exhibitions they had.
There’s something about the back room at Team Gallery...the exhibitions there seem to always upstage those in the main room. This is true with Andrew Jilka’s exhibit as well as Alissa McKendrick’s. While the exhibit didn’t consist of a large number of works, the size, texture, and imagery in them are powerful.
“Jilka’s work is greatly influenced by the instabilities and anxieties of his Midwestern upbringing. His painting is an attempt to reconcile the “high” of the history and lineage of contemporary painting with the Walmart culture he was raised in.” (source)
I like to call these works - cultural collages. Can you spot Jilka’s references to Piccaso’s Guernica?
“Jilka’s fascination with Picasso refers less to the mythology of the man himself, more so co-opting the visual language of his decidedly warped perspective in a way which cuts to our understanding of hierarchical name-brand art recognition” (source)
The base layers of Jilka’s work are drawn from art history masterpieces which he then blends with contemporary images like coloring book illustrations.
About the Artist - Andrew Jilka
Jilka received a BFA in printmaking from the University of Kansas and his MFA from the School of the Visual Arts in New York.
Andrew Jilka lives and works in Brooklyn.
